


Finders, Keepers

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Prostitution, Psychological Torture, Sexual Slavery, Torture, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-11
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2019-07-06 07:38:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 22
Words: 55,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15881538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Season six Spike is kidnapped and all slaved up. Buffy and Angel fight over who gets to rescue him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tamakin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamakin/gifts).



> Okay! So, this is my second time writing a request for mod_challenge on **nekid_spike**.
> 
> Tamakin’s request:  
>  _Girl, yous da bomb at writin spike!hurt... gives me some? Purlease? hehehe! You know how i like it :P And uhhhhh id love either spuffy or spara methinks, though if spangel suits you more thats no problemo!_
> 
> Soo... well, rather than write a 'ficlet' as promised, I sorta started a gargantuan WIP! (Isn't it, lie, completely and utterly implied in her request? I swear she meant 'write a big long epic slave!spike fic'!)
> 
> I realized I hadn't ever written a true "Slave" fic. And that had to be rectified! So here ya goes, Tam! *smooch* More soon. ;)

Spike heard their voices long before he realized they were really there. He often imagined either of them – not at the same time, normally, but it wasn’t beyond his imagination’s sense of humor to have Angel and Buffy talking, just off the periphery of understanding, sounding normal, like they were trading gibes on their way to fight some baddie du jour. An easy intimacy, camaraderie, just to haunt him. Yes, his imagination would do that.

He couldn’t see, of course… not anything beyond the play of shadows on his knees, the blue velvet cushion he’d been given to kneel on for display, and the white edge of the pedestal. Below he could see mauve carpeting, worked with chains of roses. It was a pleasant view, and he wasn’t injured, and the metal cuffs that held him in place were lined in soft fur, to keep from marking him. He should be content, but the thought, the traitorous lie, that he heard HER, made his neck stiffen.

 _Mustn’t look up_. Slaves’ eyes belonged down. And smell was denied him by the cloying sweet oil they had spread over his skin for the auction: Jasmine and Myrrh.

Her voice first – women’s voices carry farther. “…since I was fifteen, I don’t need my ex-boyfriend to protect me. … Well, what if he _isn’t_? Cordelia isn’t exactly an unimpeachable news source.”

“I told you she has a link to the powers that be.” His grumble was close enough now to be heard. “And it wasn’t Cordy who told _me_.”

No, they couldn’t be there, not really. His mind was slipping away again. He fought the urge to look up. He concentrated on his breathing. Steady, steady.

“Oh my god!”

And at that clarion, Spike did what he hadn’t for years – he looked up.

Buffy, no older than he’d left her! Beautiful. Hair a little longer, maybe. She was wearing her black skirt and the beige turtle-neck. Angel stood at her elbow, pole-axed, staring back at him.

Spike returned his eyes to his knees, but his breathing was very fast now, almost hyper-ventilating. He caught snippets of their scents over the resinous perfume oil.

“Spike?” Buffy whispered. She was close enough now he knew the darker shadow that fell against his left knee was her head, the wisps of hair ghosting out in lighter grey. A shiver started at the base of his spine and threatened to shake him apart.

A hand touched his right arm where it lay pulled taut against his back. “We’re going to get you out of here,” Angel said. “What can you tell us about the security? Is there a back way?”

Spike felt his breath passing quickly in and out of his open throat, sticky with scent. “Can’t,” he said.

“Can’t?” Buffy touched his face. She made him look at her, hand soft but firm on his jaw. “Can’t what? Can’t talk? Are you being watched?”

“Hello! I see you’re interested in our vampire. Quite a specimen, isn’t he?”

The salesman, with a voice like salesmen throughout time, cajoling and false, strode over. His shadow mixed with Angel’s and Buffy’s, almost darkening Spike’s knees completely. Buffy let her warm, soft fingertips fall from his face.

“Yes, we’re interested. Oh boy, am I _interested._ ”

“The skin is so soft, isn’t it? A lucky find in a male. Though of course, it’s that beautiful face that makes him so valuable.” The salesman’s hands were cold and rubbery. He cupped Spike’s chin and made him raise his head again. Spike was careful not to focus his gaze anywhere. The showroom lights swam under tears.

“How valuable is valuable?”

“Bidding on this particular lot will start at two hundred thousand.”

“Oh.”

“It would be a steal if he goes for so little. He is truly one-of-a-kind. There is a brochure, if you’re interested?”

There was a brief sound of struggle. As Spike’s head was released he caught a glimpse of Angel’s hand, restraining on Buffy’s bicep. “Thank you. My wife and I will be sure to attend the bidding.”

Wife? Spike risked a glance under his lashes. Buffy hit Angel in the ribs with her elbow, an incidental little shove that wouldn’t have hurt from a non-slayer. Angel covered his pain with dignity. She looked so much the way he remembered. Perfectly as he remembered. Her blonde hair curled out just a little as it brushed her shoulders. It looked like the haircut she’d gotten just after her birthday. How could she look exactly as she had so many years ago?

But Angel and Buffy were walking away, arguing with each other under their breath, elbows poking back and forth, and the salesman placed a flat hand on Spike’s lower back, just over the kidneys. “Friends of yours?”

Spike didn’t want to answer, but of course the words slipped out, “Yes, master.”

The flat hand patted him. “Don’t worry. Security will keep an eye on them but won’t hurt them. They should be motivated bidders.”

The salesman walked away, leaving Spike with a hard knot of hope in his chest, alien and unwanted as poison. He closed his eyes, tried to steady his breathing, and think of nothing. Nothing at all.

But maybe, just maybe, it was over, at last.

***  
_Three Weeks Earlier_

It started on what had been a pretty good day. He could still feel a little tenderness, on his cheek, if he pressed hard. Evidence that Buffy really did love him, that. The bruises were fading, though, he knew they had to be mostly gone – no one had commented at the birthday party.

But he’d seen Buffy off to work after patrol and a nice shag. She’d cut her hair short, but he was pretending not to mind. Was her business if she wanted to do that. He’d snookered a couple frat boys out of a c-note, and wasn’t that going to keep him in fags and booze for a while? He was on his way to the all-night convenience store to break the note and stock up, and, if luck held out, he might even be able to slip a twenty to Dawn on the sly. And when that “Doctor” bloke paid up on his storage services, there’d be cake and Gucci handbags all around from magnanimous old Spike. Even the slayer couldn’t turn that down.

Yup, his luck was on the up, completely. So he should have known it was about to take a hard turn south, considering his usual luck. But no, he was out on a clear night with a spring in his step, fingering a cheek bruise and practically whistling.

So he didn’t notice the blokes following him down the alley shortcut until four guys stepped into the opening on the other side, blocking him in. Whistle died, his hands dropped to his sides, and he scowled. Heartbeats, all of them. He tilted his head back, just to let them know he knew they were behind him. “You lot look lost. The sorority houses are that way.”

“Hello, Seventeen.” One of the men in front stepped forward. Clean-cut, military-type, broad in the shoulders and thick in the neck.

Spike tilted his head back. “Hello, random Initiative fuck-head. I’d call you a number if you were important enough to assign one. Didn’t you boyscouts pull up camp and bugger off to blow Uncle Sam’s dick somewhere else?”

The soldiers – if soldiers were what they were – carefully surrounded him as he spoke. Spike shifted slightly, keeping as many of them in sight as possible. He was buggered sideways if they left an obvious opening, though. Weaknesses? One of the soldiers had a bored look on his face, not quite paying attention. Right, that was the one he’d go for.

“This is what I like about you, Seventeen. You sure make it easy.” The lead soldier nodded to his left.

That was it. They jumped on him. Spike dove for Mr. Weak Link. The chip fired almost immediately – some bastard got in his way, he stumbled, hand touching the gritty concrete as he tried to get going, the end of the alleyway shone bright and welcoming. Someone landed on him with a grunt, thick arms wrapping around his neck, squeezing hard. He was crawling now, another body joined the first, pushing him down. He carried them. Whoever it was wouldn’t operate in the open, in the glare of Sunnydale’s shopping district.

Spike crawled.

He was kicked and punched, but he ignored it. Just concentrated on moving forward. Even as his arms were grabbed, as the chip fired again, as his face was pressed to the ground under a knee and metal closed, biting hard against his wrists.

“Damnit, Rockwell! This would be a hell of a lot easier if we tasered him.”

“Yeah, and we’ll have the money for a taser when we turn this fucker over. Catch-22, isn’t it? Now come on, before Sunnydale’s finest mistake this for a kidnapping.”

They ground his head into the pavement some more as they twisted his arms, pinning them up high between his shoulder blades. They pulled him up to wrap a collar around his throat. “The slayer will get you for this,” Spike growled.

They laughed. He knew they would. But he held his head up as they frog-marched him out of the alleyway. Buffy might not love him, but she cared, he knew she did. He was a part of the team. Even old Rupert might care. Maybe. A little.

Oh, bugger.

They dragged him into the back of a van. He felt the engine roar and the tires peel away even as he fell onto his face on the corrugated metal floor.

“Bastards. Cum-guzzling lip-dick…” Spike growled as he was pulled by his hair, back arching against someone’s knee.

“Does this give you jollies? Beating someone who can’t fight back? Hope your pride feels as small and shriveled as your…”

A punch right between the eyes halted him and a rubber bit-gag was shoved into his teeth.

There went his last weapon. He thrashed his head – and hit someone. Whoever invented the chip could not possibly die a slow and agonizing enough death to make up for being blinded by pain while just trying to get free.

Rough hands held him down, pushed him this way and that as additional bonds were fastened. At last he was left, panting for breath around the nasty-tasting rubber and conveying all the curses he would rather have shouted through pure glare.

“So this is the guy? The vampire with the anti-violence thing in its brain?”

“It just works against humans, a pain-chip. So, you know, if you want him to beat up other vampires for the fun of it, you can.”

Three men, out of the twelve that jumped him, were still there. Jeans and black shirts. One smelled strongly of motor oil. Spike looked long and hard at each of them, letting them know their features would be remembered and vengeance taken. Two new people, one an older man, banker-type in a beige suit.

One of the soldiers put his boot on Spike’s back. “Why didn’t they put that in a girl vampire?”

“Pfft. I know, right? Well, the boss of the base was a woman.”

Knowing snickers. Spike rolled his eyes.

“Well, good news is, the guy I contacted is all excited about this. He wouldn’t care if we brought him someone as ugly as you. Takes all kinds.”

“Just make sure we get enough to split. I had to hire twelve guys to take him down.”

“Rockwell, you’re a wuss. It shouldn’t take two guys with that chip in his head!”

The man in the suit lowered himself, slowly, ponderously, with a groan and a hand to support his weight on one thigh. He peered at Spike’s face. “Sure doesn’t look worth it. But one of a kind. Shit. You’ll get your money.”

 _And you’ll get your head ripped off_ , Spike thought. _You too, Rockwell._ He fixed the man whose name he knew with an especially long stare. Rockwell smirked back at him. “Isn’t that cute, how pissed he looks?”

“Speaking of piss, how long until LA, man? My back teeth are floating.”

Beige-suit frowned. “Knock it out,” he said.

“Hey, I didn’t exactly have time before the rendezvous.”

“No, you idiot. Knock the vampire out. He’s listening to us, and should the little punk get free, he now knows which way we’re heading.”

There was a fumbling and “Oh.” Spike just had time to hear Suit mutter, “Idiots,” once more before the sap hit his head.

***

L.A. hit his senses like smelling salts. He blinked and shook his head, filling his nostrils with petrol, concrete and urban decay. The pavement under his knees was still warm from the sun. A man pulled him up by his hair and frowned over his face. “It’s bruised.”

“Any client other than your first would get him like that anyway.” Beige Suit was there, still in beige, but it looked like a different jacket. “Anyway the damage is incidental. Do you have interested buyers or don’t you?”

“Heh.” The new man smelled of cigars – the cheap kind. His thumb dragged along Spike’s cheekbone, digging into the bruise. “It’s easier to find folks in LA willing to fuck for money than people willing to pay to fuck. You know that, right?”

“Did you or did you not do your job?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em lined up. Keep your man-bra on. Special interests, those aren’t hard to find. Those sick bastards are always hungry.” He smiled, hungrily, and rubbed Spike’s cheek again.

Spike tossed his head to get free of the man’s grip.

Suit and the new man exchanged papers. “Haley wanted him unblemished, and he’s paying double, so take him there first. They all know what they’re getting.”

Spike quashed any anxiety rising in his gut with a firm growl. This was good news. Chances were, whatever sick bastards paid to bugger him would want to do it in private. That meant fewer humans to escape. Hell, the ‘client’ might even untie him if he batted his baby blues.

No, he wasn’t scared at all, or helpless and panicking. Not one bit. He just kept telling himself that.

***

The client was a big man, long in bones and limbs, so that even his expensive suit rode high on his wrists and his face looked all put together from spare parts – eyes too small, mouth too large, and a ridiculous mustache.

And he leered at Spike with eager need. “It’s prettier than I thought,” he said. “Good work, Mr...”

“I can’t say I’m happy about your terms,” Beige Suit broke in, hurriedly. No, he wasn’t going to let his name be heard. That gave Spike hope. “But here is the key to the cuffs, Mr. Haley. Keep in mind, you’ll owe me double again what you paid if he escapes.”

Haley brought the key close to his mouth and looked liable to lick it. “It’s no fun if there’s no struggle.”

 _Good_ , Spike thought. _I’ll give you your struggle, sick fuck._

Beige Suit discretely bowed out of the room. Haley paused in his leering to walk to the door and slide the dead-bolt.

Then he was behind Spike, his long thighs sliding on either side of him as he pulled himself flush, his hard-on pressing against Spike’s bound hands. Spike used the opportunity and what little freedom of movement he had to squeeze, hard.

Landing on his face by the hotel bed was worth it.

Taking a boot to the gut, only somewhat less so.

He was hauled unceremoniously onto the bed like a sack of potatoes and the shackles wrenched from his wrists.

“Ah-ha. Not going to fight me now?”

Seizing the barest opportunity, Spike rolled over his shoulder, onto the floor – kicking up more dust than housekeeping would admit to being there. He ripped the gag off his face and tried to duck under the bed – only to find it a solid box structure.

Bollocks. He needed time, distance to get the leg irons off. He crawled across the room, searching frantically for an exit.

And was tackled.

“Yeah!” the man laughed, eager and excited as they wrestled. Unfair as it was – Spike had strength and agility, but no legs and he couldn’t actually hurt the bastard – the struggled went a good long time. He could twist out of a hold and squirm away, but every time he only made it a foot or so before a strong hand gripped him and pulled him back.

He was able to escape mostly when Haley let go to attack his clothing. Third time, he wriggled away without his jeans, which Haley held, stripping him as he moved. Denim bunched fast and hurt, damn it, as he struggled against it.

No, he was muscled up, wrestled under another body. Teeth clenched on the fabric of his T-shirt, and in panic he twisted and swung at the guy.

Blinking through the pain, he limped away, only to be grabbed again. This time, Haley had him bare. Their bodies squirmed together, a parody of passion in struggle until Haley could get himself lined up, get Spike down.

“Ah, yeah… that’s it… oh that’s it, bitch.”

Spike’s forehead was against the wall, his right arm pinned under him, his left twisted against his back, held by the bastard who’d paid to rape him.

Cock jabbing in and out – stubby little thing, but more than enough to get the job done, to tear him and make him bleed, make his skin want to crawl away from where the other man’s lightly furred stomach slapped against him, wet with sweat.

Spike felt himself stop struggling, just fall limp against his strained joints, into the pain and helplessness. “Oh yeah, take it. Yeah.”

He realized, for the first time, that he wasn’t getting away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Forced whoring! Vampire abuse. Mention of canon Spuffy (gotta warn my delicate slash fans!) Also hot burning Spangel. In a shower.
> 
> As you can see, befitting an Epic Slave Fic, I'm posting long chapters (for me.)

Two strangers came to pick him up from Haley’s hotel room. They didn’t look at him as they helped him to his feet. One said, “Jeeeezuz,” under his breath as he ducked to pull up Spike’s jeans.

As soon as there were fewer than four hands touching him, Spike tried to make a break for it. But it was to no avail. Part of him knew it would be, but his body was too stubborn to take the brain’s advice.

In the back seat of a ’75 Bonneville the guy who had paused to help him cover his privates patted him on the head. “It’s all right,” he said.

Spike flashed fang and snarled at him, and was rewarded with the sharp scent of fear.

“Sonnabitch!”

In the driver’s seat, the other goon chuckled. “You think that was a kitty cat? Shit, man, you can’t _talk_ to vampires.”

Spike rested his forehead on the window. He didn’t want to look at the two perfunctory minions, knowing they knew what had just happened to him.

They took him to a Motel 6. All the best for the vampire whore trade, apparently.

They were met at the door to one of the rooms by an excited man, slight of build and sweating. He smelled like a hormone factory – that and, incongruously, cooking oil.

“That’s it? That’s him?”

“Yes, spanky, this is your vampire. You have the money?”

Spike threw his shoulders back, trying to use the moment of discussion to get free from the thug holding him, but the bastard held on. He was getting weak from injury and exhaustion, and so he hung in the man’s grip – let the wanker do some work – while Spanky exchanged a wad of bills with Minion Two. He was then unceremoniously shoved in the motel room.

Thin motel-room carpeting mashed into his nose, and he could smell dander and dust and an ancient, foully decayed taint of urine.

Shaking fingers touched his shoulder. “You’re… oh, my. It must have been hard to capture you.”

Spike snorted. “Right. I’m all beat up because I’m a big, bad, vampire.”

Spanky (which was most definitely not this man’s name, but it fit well enough that Spike started calling him that in his head), helped Spike up into a sitting position against the side of the bed, all the while buzzing like a speed addict, fingers trembling and touching, he skirted each bruise and injury, never touching directly where Spike was wounded, but tracing out the path of visible veins and pressing, first gently, then, firmer, then downright hard over the carotid artery.

Spanky leaned back, both hands flat on Spike’s chest, pressing in uncomfortably. “Your… your heart… I mean, it’s really still, isn’t it?”

“What you paid for, innit?” Spike peered at the man’s rapt expression. “Listen, Mate. I don’t want to be here. You let me go, I’ll….” Spike grimaced. Was this a fate worse than captivity? No, no it wasn’t. “I’ll tell you all sorts of ‘eldritch vampire lore’, yeah?”

But Spanky was pushing his thumbs up into Spike’s mouth, pulling his lip back in an involuntary sneer.

“Bloody hell!” Spike tossed his head away from the probing fingers, and got a mild chip-shock for his trouble.

Spanky looked put-out. “Where… where are your fangs?”

Spike scowled. “Where they always are. Get your dirty hands out of my mouth!”

“Show them to me. Show me your fangs.” Spanky’s wet breath fell all over Spike’s face as he searched, like he could make the fangs appear.

“Get off!”

“I paid for you. You’ll give me what I want.” The man was panting, quivering, desperate, and ever so gently humping against Spike’s hip.

“Show me.”

Spike knew that if the man hadn’t asked, he’d have flashed fang at him from the start. But knowing it was what the pervert wanted made him fight the itch under his skin, the anger that made him want to fight, to rebel somehow.

The john’s mouth was open and hovering over his, making Spike have to hold his breath for fear of breathing in the man’s exhalation. He didn’t want any part of Spanky inside him. “Do you… want blood? Is that it? Blood?”

And Spanky was rubbing the fresh cut heel of his hand against Spike’s lips, grinding into them, trying to force entry. Despite the grime, and the sour smell of the man, the blood called to him. He was starving after the full day’s ordeal.

An animalistic snarl cut through the air as Spike snapped at the hand in front of him.

Blinking back the white phosphors of the chip-fire, Spike moaned, “Hope you’re happy, sadistic bastard,” into the foul-smelling carpet.

Of course he was happy. Fear-soaked arousal permeated his copious sweat as he turned Spike onto his back, thick little fingers feeling all over him, rubbing the salt-sweat and sweet blood into him, maddening smells. He twisted, caught on the knife’s edge of pain, humiliation, hunger, desperation.

Spike stared up at the poured concrete ceiling. He felt those fat little fingers probing, pushing into him, and thought that at least this was almost over. Sick little fuck couldn’t last long.

Sweating thighs pushed his apart, pressing in to already-sore flesh holding the sense memory of previous hip bones hitting just the same spots, a previous cock nudging, pushing, forcing its way in. Spike bore down, anything to make it easier. He held his breath and kept his eyes on the ceiling, Spanky’s greasy visage just a blur see-sawing in and out of frame.

***

Spike wasn’t in his crypt.

He wasn’t at Willie’s, and he wasn’t at the Magic Box, and as Buffy swung by the liquor store on Front Street, she had to admit she was looking for him.

Damn it. She twirled her stake in frustration, stomping through all of Spike’s favorite graveyards. She should be happy. She should be thrilled. Here she was, not having the opportunity to give in to her baser desires. Again. She should happily wrap up patrol and head home to be a good role model.

Which is what she’d done yesterday, disappointed but also relieved, after not finding Spike in his usual haunts.

He was usually so predictable! What was up?

Buffy ignored her own reasoning and stomped once more over the well-worn paths of Spike’s life.

He wasn’t at Clem’s cave. He wasn’t at the Bronze. He wasn’t lurking around her house.

It was stupid. It was infuriating. She wanted him, damn it. His suddenness, his fire and passion and… yikes.

So much for the self-delusion. Nice, happy self delusion. She missed it.

Buffy stomped up to the top porch step and slumped against the railing, looking at her stake in her lap. When had it started? How had it come to this? She was struggling through the daylight hours aching with loss, weighed down by responsibility and mind-numbingly dull chores, and no hope of anything different in the future. All she had to look forward to was a decidedly evil vampire and his beautiful, open, eager hands.

Part of her was disgusted – I mean, he was _dead_. Evil. But what the hell was “evil”, anyway? Part of her wished she’d just jumped on the Spike wagon years ago, when he was first chipped. Think of all the years of attachment-free sex! And at least one “Buffy’s Failed Relationships” heartache avoided!

But no, that wouldn’t have worked, because she wasn’t even attracted to Spike back then. Punk? Not her thing.

It was really like the BuffyBot had said – you have _got_ to see him naked.

“You’re home early!” Dawn plopped down next to her, a bag of microwave popcorn in her hands.

Oo, salt. Buffy grabbed a handful before her sister could pull the bag away with a “hey!”

“Spike’s missing,” Buffy said. “I mean, not that I care, it’s just… you know, evil. He could be plotting.”

“Omigawd! How can you be so mean? He could be in trouble! How long has it been since you saw him?”

Buffy blinked, completely blind-sided by Dawn’s reaction. “Uh…” Crap. How long, pre-sexcapades, was long enough to be concerned over Spike being gone?

Dawn’s glare gave her no time to calculate a lie. “Two days?”

“I’m getting Tara. God, Buffy! If it was Xander you’d have been searching already.” Dawn shoved the bag of popcorn at her and jumped to her feet.

“Dawn! Xander’s not evil.”

Dawn spun around in the door, one finger up. “Don’t start. Spike’s a part of the group now, soul or not, and it’s our duty to find him!”

And like that, the door slammed shut and Buffy was left alone, leaning against the railing. “Please,” she said, “don’t try to talk me out of finding the evil vampire.”

***

Spike had no idea how much time had passed, only that three different sets of hands had been on him, violating him, when at last he was dumped on the floor of a dusty warehouse. Sunlight filtered down from high windows, sparkling with motes, and walking across the littered floor was Beige Suit man. “What happened?”

“Hey man, don’t look at me. Our fifth stop didn’t like the look of the blood sucker. Said come back when he’s in fewer pieces.”

Someone pushed Spike over onto his back. He raised two fingers at them from his bound hands and just sighed. He was bone-sore all over and about ready for a fucking nap.

Who knew even a city the size of LA would have so many perverts ready to abuse a vampire?

“This is not turning out to be the investment I intended. Tsk. Well, get him cleaned up and fed. I’ll make some calls.”

All Spike heard was “fed”, the other words falling into unimportance in comparison. He relaxed as he was picked up by his elbows and dragged across the gritty floor – the place must have been a machine shop at one point, oils of various ages and colors soaked into the concrete, overlain in places with ancient sawdust.

They dragged him through a shaft of sunlight and he hissed and squirmed his irritation.

“Hey!” One of his handlers thumped him on the head. “You want us to drop you here? Huh?”

The other muttered, “Wow, I thought that was a myth.”

They draped the chain between his wrists over a copper showerhead, long gone green with age. The pipe shivered and groaned as the spigot was turned, and then a rush of ice-cold water washed down over him, streaked with rust.

“Let it run out.”

“Dude, do we have to, like, wash him?”

Spike rolled his head back out of the frigid spray, rolled his shoulders, and then snapped the showerhead off the wall, throwing it across the wide warehouse space. The handlers stepped back in shock. The water, now in a fat stream, pattered against concrete a foot in front of him. “’M not a dog,” he said. “I’m a vampire, yeah? And if it weren’t for this chip in my head, I could rip your heads off, both of you, before you blinked. With these sodding chains on!” He shook his fists, snapping the chain tight in emphasis.

The handlers looked at each other. The one to the left shrugged. Spike took a step back half a second too late as he was tackled to the wet floor.

Cold, wet, and despite that none too clean, he was shackled in chain-link cell that wouldn’t have held him with his hands free.

“You fuckers! Where’s my food?” He lunged after them with all the strength he had left.

***

For three days, he was shackled in the warehouse and dragged out at night. Three cold water showers and twice he was fed. Donor blood, gluey with coagulant, ice-cold (fresh from a cooler), but the bag had that nice suppleness and his fangs pop through satisfactorily. And there is no spice like hunger.

Spike waited, as patiently as he could, for an opening, an opportunity. A loose chain, an open door. It didn’t come.

The customers fell into three categories: Vampire Fan Freaks, who usually got their paws on him first, then the “Oh glee! Someone I can beat the shit out of guilt-free” crowd, who stacked up at the end of the night when their damage wouldn’t bother each other, and finally the circumspect ones.

Those are, strangely enough, the ones he fears. He likes to know where he is with a person. He likes to know their motivation. The closed-off expressions, the hands moving just enough to get the job done, it all makes him quake in suspense, waiting for violence or tears. Or both.

And then, on the third day, they take him to Angel.

No, that smacks too much of warning. They took him to a hotel room, like so many others he’d seen, cheap, reeking of continual casual habitation, pre-ban cigarette smoke fossilized in carpet a color only popular between 1983 and ‘84.

So he wasn’t exactly looking up eagerly to see who was waiting for the privilege of humiliating him.

No, his first clue was hearing that familiar voice, in a familiar tone, snap, “Get out. Now.”

Spike felt an overwhelming urge not to look up, not to banish any doubt by seeing Angel, knowing Angel saw him, saw the manacles and the bruises and could deduce every degradation he’d suffered.

So of course he tossed his head back and smirked. “That curse is a bitch, but I didn’t think you were _this_ desperate, Peaches.”

Disgust and rage contorted Angel’s face in equal measure. “That’s not why I’m here. Why are _you_ here?”

Spike jerked on his chains. “Oh. Obviously here by soddin’ choice, aren’t I?”

Angel turned partially away. He pulled a stake out of his coat pocket.

“Lovely. Give it your best shot. I’ll shove it up your arse. Sideways.”

Angel’s smirk and raised eyebrow suggested he found this threat less than compelling.

He took a slow step forward and his eyes glinted when he saw Spike take an involuntary flinch back. “And all this time I thought it was a ruse. Sign suckers up for a date with a vampire and give them just what they asked for.”

Spike shrugged. “Sounds like something that Trick fellow woulda done. Meals that pay for the privilege. Hate to disappoint you. The humans are the baddies this time around. So, you going to use that thing?”

Angel squinted at him. “Don’t insult me.”

“My little handicap doesn’t apply to demons, you know, and last time I checked, poufy soul or no, you’re still one of us.”

Angel looked down at his stake. He squared up to Spike, who raised his clenched fists as far as the chains would allow. His jaw was set, chin down, the bruise along the jawbone adding to his defiant air. Angel looked down at his stake again. He sighed and tossed it aside. His stance relaxed, he shook his head.

Spike was slower to lower his guard. “So that’s it, then, right? Helpless innocent here – well, in these proceedings anyway. You’re going to help me out of here, right?”

Angel’s face had that flat expression he got when he was really thinking about something. Some people, you could see their wheels turning; Angel only gave you the screen-saver.

“Come _on_! I know I’m not a saint, but I have been helping the white hats for a good solid time now. Buffy would vouch for me.”

Angel just put his hands in his pockets and tilted his head back. Hard-core consideration.

“Or is it that it’s _me_?”

Angel’s indifference melted into a sneer. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“If you fancied a shag, you could have just asked, you know.”

Angel took a step forward, looming menacingly. “You smell like a public urinal, Spike.”

“Sorry to disappoint. The accommodations at the hellish prison aren’t up to snuff. Cold hose-down and a concrete floor. I’m thinking of calling the hotel commission to complain.”

A look of pained sympathy washed over Angel’s face and then, angrily, he grabbed Spike by the elbow and shoved him into the hotel room’s small bathroom.

“Ow! Hey! Get off!”

Angel had that flat-line stubborn look he got, a look that said he’d beat a brick wall down with his forehead sooner than give up his chosen course of action, and so Spike only struggled perfunctorily, to make sure it was understood that he could, as Angel stripped off his easily-removed clothing and pushed him into the shower stall.

The water came on cold, of course, but it was still ten degrees warmer than the hose at the warehouse. Angel adjusted the temperature up and rolled back his sleeves.

Spike shivered, but turned his face and hands up into the spray, sucking back the tears of gratitude that wanted to slip out.

And then Angel grabbed him and turned him, hard, and hands started soaping up his back with firm, angry strokes.

Spike had to laugh. “You’re getting your poncy shirt all wet, you know that.”

“Shut up, Spike.”

Not one to obey an order from the pouf, Spike muttered, “Done talking, anyway,” and leaned his forearms against the tile wall, letting his body relax into the heat of the water and the relentless scrubbing. The filth he’d felt like a second skin was coming off at last. He was grateful, sod it all, grateful for Angel’s hard hands that moved his body with every pass. He fell into a rhythm with it, pressing and releasing in circles, the air filling with the sharp, pure scent of hotel soap.

And then those hands left off. Spike almost staggered from the loss, only then realizing he’d been pressing up into the touch. He turned to let the shower sluice the soap from his back, rolling his head under the spray. “Oh, peaches. That was wonderful. Think I need a cigarette now.” The chains laying against his front, lax, and the cuffs on his wrists and ankles were hot from the water, holding the heat like batteries.

The shower curtain protested being thrown wider and a heavy foot landed in the tub. Spike slit open his eyes to see Angel, dark and heavy and very naked, join him in the shower.

Angel’s hands were warmed by the water but his body was cool as ever, even his cock, hard and full but so cold against Spike’s water-warmed belly as Angel drew him close.

“Gonna wash my front, now?”

Angel’s large hands roaming over Spike’s chest seemed like an affirmative enough answer, and despite everything, Spike found himself turned on for the first time in days, aching for those hands to run lower. And they did, sliding easily over him on a slick layer of soap bubbles. Angel stroked his cock from base to tip, squeezing just a little at the end as it twitched and filled in his grip.

But when Angel leaned in to kiss him, Spike found himself, much to his own surprise, turning his head. “No. Not here. Not like this.”

Angel’s hand tightened. “You were practically begging for it.”

“Maybe. But I’m being held captive as a sodding sex slave, Angel. Just undo the chains. Please.”

Angel growled. He pressed Spike back against the shower wall, the hot water knob hard against his kidney as Angel’s tongue forced its way into his mouth, cool and wet and tasting oh so familiar.

Spike made a quiet whine in the back of his throat. Those big hands were working him, no longer even pretending to wash.

When Angel broke the kiss, he gasped, “Chains. Off. I’ll make it good for you.”

And then the air was leaving his lungs with a wet smack as he landed chest-first against the opposite shower wall. Apparently, that wasn’t the tactic to use.

Angel’s teeth closed on the back of his ear and his legs were kicked as wide as the chains would allow. Spike tried to struggle, though his wrists were pressed to his chest in front of him. The chains made loud chimes against porcelain.

“You whored yourself out,” Angel said. “That’s how you got yourself into this mess, isn’t it? You whored yourself out for blood money until someone got the bright idea to keep you.”

“No. I was jumped. Initiative fuckers, they…”

Angel’s hand cupped the back of Spike’s head and drove it sharply into the wall. “Don’t you dare deny me what you gave them.”

“Fucking bleeding possessive arse! They took, I didn’t give.”

But Angel wasn’t listening. He was prying Spike’s cheeks apart, which he belatedly clenched, feeling the icy strain of muscle as Angel forced his way inside on a stinging film of hand soap.

“Fuck,” Spike gasped, cheek pressed to the cold tile, body almost hot now, and a trickle of blood coming off his eyebrow just adding to the suffocating musk in the air.

Angel’s strong arms were lifting him, pulling him back, possessing him. And that was what it was, wasn’t it? The brooding wonder could talk all he wanted about wanting what was right and good, but in the end, it wasn’t Spike’s bondage that bothered him; it was smelling other men’s spunk on him.

Angel moved steadily, slowly, indulgently, his hands slipping up Spike’s stomach and tweaking his nipples, reaching down to coax his cock back into life, until Spike was thrusting forward into his grip, pressing back into his thrusts, and begging unintelligibly.

He came before Angel did, surprised to feel himself slip right over the edge, release quickly washed away before his eyes, like a time-lapse photo, while his mind returned to itself, free from the tyranny of sensation, and he had just enough time to truly feel disgusted and dirty before Angel’s open-mouthed kisses on the back of his neck turned into a fang-filled bite and he grunted, both hands slamming Spike’s hips back as hard as they could against his forward thrust, spilling inside him with one, two twitches.

And then Angel was leaning against him, heavy and wet, breathing slowly. There was nothing to do but wait it out. And then another kiss on the nape, and a soft tongue, cleaning the traces of blood left from the bite.

Angel soaped him all over again. Spike let himself be moved, ragdoll tired. He was rinsed off and the shower turned off.

Angel dried first himself and then Spike. Then led Spike to the bed and let him fall on it, on his side.

When Angel returned from the bathroom a second time, neatly dressed, just a slight stain of water at the cuffs of his silk shirt, Spike said, “So you aren’t going to let me free, then?”

“We… this didn’t happen.”

“Right.”

“I can’t let you free, Spike. But I’m not going to kill you. I owe you just that much. For Buffy.”

“You’re a real fuckin’ hero.”

Angel had the grace to look pained, but he still walked out the door, leaving Spike where he was to be picked up by the handlers waiting outside.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter of the slave fic!
> 
> Warnings: Uh, slave fic? Hello?
> 
> After all the forced whoring, Spikey's little slave experience is about to change for the not-so-pleasant. Meanwhile, Buffy decides to take drastic measures.

Noxious smoke poured from the mouth of the crypt, smelling rather disturbingly like the Doublemeat kitchen. Buffy wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “It wasn’t him,” she repeated.

“We found the eggs in his crypt.” Riley gestured back at the mausoleum door. “You have to let go of this weird… forgiveness. If what you say is true, it’s obvious he left town to avoid getting caught!”

“He’s been missing for two weeks! Anyone could have put those eggs in there!”

Riley peered at her. “Why are you defending him?”

Buffy folded her arms, presenting, pre-approved, the argument her sister had used: “He’s a member of my team.”

“Well, my mission is over for today,” Riley smiled a little sadly and held out his hand. “I wish you luck on yours.”

Buffy felt odd, shaking his hand, like they hadn’t been lovers just a year ago. “You’ll tell me if you… your army group… thing… finds him?”

“Of course. I might not agree with having him on your team, but he is, and I respect that.”

“Thanks, Riley. It was good to see you again.”

“You too,” he said, and walked away.

Away to his ridiculously competent and hot wife. Buffy groaned, eyes to the heavens. That was it, it was time to give up and call Angel.

***

“So, after he escaped this time, he nearly made it a block away, and one of your men was clipped by a passing car?”

“It’s a problem of discipline. Once he’s broken to the bit, you won’t have all this overhead,” the man in the black suit gestured at the ceiling.

Spike was crouched in the only position his chains allowed him any dignity – ironically this was on his knees, hands clasped over his groin, glaring at the men walking back and forth past his cage, letting them know with his expression just how many little pieces he would tear them into if he could.

“I mean, how many handlers have you hired? Five? And then there’s transportation, scheduling. A properly broken slave will handle all that himself.”

“That sounds mighty optimistic,” Beige Suit responded. He was holding a manila folder, bent down to frown at the papers. “And the price!”

“You’ll more than recoup the investment.”

“When? He’s immortal; I’m not.”

Black Suit smiled like a used car dealer smelling sale. “I can promise full satisfaction in two weeks.”

“Just try it,” Spike growled. “I’ve been tortured by people who consider it their life’s calling. You’ll never break me. I’ll rip your balls off.”

Beige Suit looked up from his papers, one eyebrow raised. “All right,” he said. “Do it.”

The manila folder closed. The chain-link gate opened, and three thugs approached him, one holding a sap high.

They didn’t take any chances this time.

***

He awoke to a gentle tapping of his cheek. His head was throbbing – which was about right for having been clubbed unconscious. He did wonder where the bloody throb came from, though, what with no pulse to drive it.

“Ah, good,” a red-skinned demon patted his face. “I thought you’d want to be awake to bid your dimension farewell.”

Instantly he lurched forward, only to feel hard straps digging in to his flesh. The red demon nodded. What was it? A Kalla? Kashal? Something like that. Difficult buggers to kill, he recalled. This one was female, her white hair in a neat bun behind her horns, gold-rimmed spectacles on her nose, and a white lab coat on over some red leather body-armor, just for fuckin’ incongruities’ sake.

“The portal will open shortly. Is there anything I can get for you? A last cigarette perhaps?”

Spike rolled his head, checking how restrained he was. A wooden surface stood behind him, like he was strapped to a platform. “You can get me the pillocks who jumped me. That’d be nice.”

The demon smiled. Yellow, pointy teeth. “Come now, there must be something I can give you to commemorate your last moments on Earth. Don’t squander the opportunity, I won’t offer this again.”

“Who are you? The evil, interdimensional stewardess?”

“I’m with the training company, silly vampire. We want to make sure we understand _all_ of your needs.”

On “all” she raised her boney, hairless brows meaningfully.

Spike snorted. “Just so you know what’s important to me? Taking a last request just so you know what most to take away?”

“Of course, that was the idea.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, love.”

Her smile was terrifying, all her needle-teeth coming together too close and at wrong angles. “Oh no. You haven’t disappointed at all.”

And then she turned to write something on a clipboard, flipping a few pages and checking something, and then writing a little more. She hummed a little, thoughtfully.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Spike strained against his bonds, trying to turn his head enough to look at what she was writing.

“It means you’re an open book. Pride, revenge, violence: oh, you are going to be fun to work with.” She set down the clipboard and pencil. “Ah, I believe we are there.”

Spike struggled, moving his eyes as far as he could, trying to detect some hint of change in the room.

A moment later, he felt a slight pop, like air pressure changing oh so slightly, and more of the ka-whatever demons filed in. One took the clipboard and another handed the demonness who had talked to him a Styrofoam cup. Smelled like one of those overpriced coffee drinks.

And the wooden structure he was strapped to lurched forward, so he had a dizzying prospect of the floor for a moment, and the thought of what it would feel like to smash into it, nose-first, with who knew how many pounds of wood at his back, and then he was flipping back to stare at the ceiling – water stained acoustical tile – as wood groaned and snapped into place. So the portable torture wall folded back into a trolley. He fought against the restraints again, grunting in frustration as all he achieved was making his wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles sore.

“I think we’ll start with the psychiatrist,” the demoness said. “Take him to Stanley and see what the wait is going to be. K’Zaal? Is this skim? I said whole milk latte! Take it back.”

K’Zaal ran like the devil himself was chasing him.

Spike turned his gaze to the ceiling. All the strain of trying to look right was wearing. A standard drop ceiling gave way to rough-hewn stone strung with safety lights on gently looped cables. He closed his eyes. The wooden platform he was strapped to vibrated pleasantly over cracks in the flooring, and he was glad of a rest.

Psychiatrist? Ha. Spike relaxed, secure in the knowledge that whatever mind-games they thought they had going for them, they wouldn’t break William the Bloody.

He kept his sense of calm though an interminable wait (white drop ceiling again – did this dimension not have any manufacturing of its own?) and through a group of demons in white coats wheeling him through a door only barely wide enough for the big wooden trolley, with much bumping and stopping and going back and forth.

No, no danger from these geniuses.

Then he was tilted up to stand, sort of, again, and saw the doctor. That, he had to admit, was a bit disconcerting. It was a writhing mass of purplish-pink tentacles poking randomly out of a white lab coat.

“You the doc? I’m told I have an anger management problem. Rip tentacles off squid-things that keep me tied up.”

The squid-thing didn’t respond, only waved its top tentacles, frond-like, at the demons that had brought him in, and then rolled – it looked like rolling, because the tentacles at top were falling and going under it, and there were new top tentacles waiting to take their place – but damn the coat stayed where it was.

“Could you not move? You make me seasick.”

Again, no response, but a wet, warm, and soft tentacle started to probe at his ankle, slithering worm-like up under the cuff of his jeans.

“GAH!” Spike shook his leg as much as the restraints would allow. “Is there a single bloody creature in the universe that doesn’t fancy me?”

No response, again, but he suspected the kinking up of the tentacles on the right side of the thing was a sort of laugh. And now it was crawling up him, leaving slime wherever the tentacles passed seeking purchase. Spike grunted and tugged at his restraints, desperate to kick the thing across the room – he was sure it would splat in a very satisfying way.

A worm was wriggling under his shirt, sliding left to right along the top of his belt, and the one at his ankle was still crawling up his leg. The mass of pinkish “psychiatrist” was high enough now he started struggling to lift his chin, keep his mouth away.

A tentacle slapped against his cheek, leaving mucus-like goo and started pressing, insistent and hard, against the join of his lips. Spike breathed hard and fast through his nose, holding his lips as tight as he could and twisting back and forth, hoping for a loosened strap or some bolt to give way while his body was swallowed.

Then the tentacles prodded at his nose, wriggled blindely up his nostrils and into his ears and over his eyes.

His mouth finally opened when he couldn’t keep a horrified scream from escaping.

***

Spike didn’t feel himself fall asleep, nor awake, there was no transition, just a jerk as his limbs flailed about, suddenly freed of their bonds. He staggered comically since both his feet had been kicking, windmilled his arms and came to a halt. He was in the middle of a large, empty, dark space. There was a spotlight on him, but the light didn’t extend to the walls.

In the darkness, someone slowly clapped.

Spike turned to see Angel step into the light, his hands still coming together slowly, almost in time to his steps.

Spike relaxed. “Oh for the love of Christ. Dream fuckery, is it? Like I haven’t seen _that_ before.”

Angel pouted. “Oh, Spikey. You don’t think I’m real? That hurts.”

“Pull the other one. They take me to some demon called a psychiatrist, it crawls all over me, and then I see you? I’m not stupid, mate.”

Angel shrugged. “Well, not very.”

He did smell like Angel, and look like Angel, and loom over Spike like Angel. “But you see, Spike, when you’re tired, and, oh, in pain…” he punched Spike in the solar plexus.

Paralysis gripped Spike’s shoulder as he attempted to swing back.

The not-Angel chuckled and bent to whisper in his ear, “You’ll start believing. And then… oh, I get to hurt your feelings.”

He cackled like Angel at his own bad joke, and reached casually between Spike’s legs to squeeze his balls.

Spike’s left arm was still paralyzed. He tried to swing with the right, to kick… he made a strangled cry of frustration.

“Oh, I see you’ve figured out one of the more pleasant things about this dream reality.”

Spike found himself straightening out of the hunched stance he’d fallen into after the punch. He didn’t want to do that! And he was stepping into Angel’s embrace, his bare skin flush to Angel’s wool and silk. Angel kissed his neck, just below the ear. “I’m in control, Spike. I control all of it – even you.”

He tried to fight, tried to slow himself as he dropped to his knees, his fingers didn’t even pause, opening Angel’s slacks with practiced ease.

And then he was swallowing a familiar cock, and no amount of panic, disgust, or anger would stop his mouth from working eagerly.

“Oh the humiliation! God that feels good. Oh baby, I’m gonna pop eating all this delicious negative emotion. Give it to me good, baby.”

Very loud sucking, slobbering sounds filled the void whenever the demon-that-was-not-Angel paused. Spike felt like he wanted to shrink away from his own skin. Like he wanted to burn alive, knowing that this nameless creature saw him like this, doing this, what only Angel should have ever seen or heard or felt.

_It’s not Angel,_ he reminded himself. _It’s a copy. A dream. The real Angel – he wouldn’t be a part of this._

“Ha! Are you _kidding_? He’d pay for a front row seat to this. I’m not making up this vision, you know. It’s all from your head. This is a place you’ve put yourself. Countless times. Anything for a bit of affection, right, boy?” A hand came down on the back of his head as the not-Angel thrust forward, hard, deep. Spike felt his throat open eagerly, suckling like a starving animal after all the saliva building up around the hard cock in his mouth, his lips pressing and pressing against Angel’s pubic bone like he couldn’t get enough of feeling it.

“Think about it. Mmm… you know, I can go all night. Literally. I can choose to feel pleasure in this or nothing at all.” He rocked his hips gently, easing in and out. He put his hand on Spike’s forehead to keep him back as he – against his own will – whimpered and struggled to keep the cock inside him. “Yeah. Think about that.” He ran the tip of his dick slowly around Spike’s lips. “How you wanted it. How you pushed your pride way down into the dirt. Gladly. And you know what?” Here not-Angel leaned down to whisper conspiratorially into his ear, “It meant even less to him than it does to me.”

And then he thrust back in, all the way in, so fast that Spike gagged and chocked, felt like he was _breathing_ cock.

And the demon was true to his word – he kept it up all night.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I got on a roll yesterday and wrote the next chapter!
> 
> Warnings: Torture.

It only felt like all night. Shortly after the dream-Angel finally (FINALLY) achieved release in his aching mouth, he awoke to slimey, soft tendrils slipping out of his mouth, and his nose, and ears, and… bloody hell the thing had been in everywhere. He quivered all over in disgust.

The psychiatrist just rolled in its tentacle-flipping way back across the room and prodded a rubber-coated keyboard.

Spike coughed and spit out a wad of viscous gel. “Didn’t affect me,” he said, though his voice was weak from all the gunk in his throat and mouth.

Again a cluster of tentacles kinked up in little spasms. That was definitely a laugh.

The smaller demons in lab coats came back, and there was a repeat of the great getting-through-the-door ordeal with waving hands and gestures. Spike gritted his teeth and let anger fall over him like a nice, comforting blanket.

Down another corridor with a stone ceiling, they stuck a needle in his arm. He assumed it was a sedative and so he forced himself to relax, his eyes closing with just a touch of flutter, like he couldn’t help it. He let the rage pool dormant and still in his veins like blood.

The bastards still wait a long time before undoing the first of the straps. An ankle, not good enough for his needs. Then they do one wrist. Good. He punches, catches a jaw and hears that satisfactory crunch as teeth jar together and break.

The sedative was pressing like cotton wool on the edges of his senses, but still he managed to find a buckle and free his head so he could turn and undo the buckle on his left wrist. He was trying to see what he was doing, but black moths were eating away his vision all around. No, he knew that wasn’t right… but if you could just…

He was still fumbling with the buckle, fingertips numb, when the darkness took him.

Darkness. Just a shade more real, harder than unconsciousness. He tried to breathe in and found his throat blocked. Panic took him and he thrashed, hitting the back of his head on stone, his elbows scraped stone, his knees, the bottoms of his feet, and still, no matter how he flung his head left and right and rubbed it against the walls, this thing, large and bumpy and plastic, filled his mouth and throat and wouldn’t allow him to breathe.

Spike forced the panic down, though it would rise up again, now and then, a tremor deep in his chest. It was hard, not breathing.

He clenched his fists – that movement was free for him. One. Two. Count to ten. But that took too long. Five. Ten. He closed and opened his eyes, discerning the slight variation. Trying hard to see just made spots swim over the black. He closed them again.

So, he was in a stone chamber, not much bigger than he was. There was about three inches of wiggle-room on either side of him, but the ceiling was low enough that he had to bow his head. His arms were fastened behind him. He could feel leather straps and make metal jingle by wiggling.

More carefully, he rubbed his cheek on the rough-hewn wall, feeling this time the shape of the straps across his cheek, the ring just in front of his ear. He went to the other side, same thing. So that buckled in back.

Methodically he searched out his buckle points until he found one he could rub against the stone, between his wrists. He shifted back and rubbed, rubbed, rubbed, back and forth the two inches he could move, until the metal was hot. Painfully hot, but he didn’t stop. A little burn was worth it for freedom. After a while the skin directly behind the buckle stopped feeling the pain, and the skin around burned instead. Scrape-scrape-scrape. His senses narrowed to that little strip of metal, the leather around it. He tugged hard, but it wasn’t yet weakened enough. Scrape-scrape-scrape-tug-DING!

His wrists moved a few inches apart – and stopped. He’d snapped one joining but there were others.

In a mixture of relief, pride, and helplessness, he pressed his cheek to the cold stone wall and fell asleep.

He awoke with a start, once again panicking over the lack of breath. (How he wished he could break himself of that!) His chest quivered, rising and falling in helpless pulls of strained muscles, trying to draw in breath against the enormous gag they’d shoved in him.

Nice little memory aid, there. Like he could forget the sensation of being forced to perform fellatio for hours. His jaw burned with being held open, and when that became a background sensation, a glow, it would spike now and then with little ticks of agony. He could never lose it. Why couldn’t he get used to it? _Oh, right, because that wouldn’t be torture, would it?_ He rolled his eyes at the darkenss.

He started in on the next buckle he could feel, and the burns and muscle cramps awoke with a vengeance, like a thousand sudden stabs-wounds along his arms and joints. He felt his head swim. He was getting weak with hunger. This wasn’t going to do at all. He sank his teeth into the gag, as deep as they would go, and that pressure grounded him. He yanked hard on the wrist-bindings and something snapped.

And he fell unconscious.

Three repetitions of the panicked, flailing awake, followed by pain and dizziness and this new sensation like ants crawling up and down his arms, running relay races. He had no idea how much time had passed, but he had his hands separated. They were still held behind his back by a strap at his elbows, but he could feel along his waist and sides and touch just the top of the buckle on his ankle, if he really strained for it and twisted.

He could strain and twist for twenty seconds before little red blots exploded on his vision and he felt unconsciousness lapping at his heels. So he counted to twenty, then made himself rest for forty, as he worked millimeter by millimeter closer to getting that strap.

The wall in front of him groaned, as a rusty old hinge would, and opened into glaring light. Too late he shut his eyes, and was bathed in the pink glow of his own eyelids.

Hands reached for him, and he struggled, swinging his shoulders as much as he could and tugging for all he was worth on that elbow-binding. His fingers reached forward, scratching at air and hoping to catch flesh, and his fangs sank into the hard plastic gag.

Blind and gagged he thrashed, hitting something metal edge-on, and then a floor, gritty with dust.

They held him down on his stomach, and clapped new cuffs on his wrists. The fight went out of him. There was no escape this time. He blinked tears into the linoleum against his cheek.

“Well, I can see why they sent you here,” said a familiar female voice. He wondered if she’d gotten her whole milk latte this time.

“K’zaal, get him up on the exam table in one piece, please. Oh, we’ll need blood. Human, preferably. Though I think the records say they can live on Refraal blood too.”

Blood. His gut tried to climb up his esophagus and dislodge the gag, eager for a drop of blood.

A team of red skinned demons wrestled him onto a medical examination chair like you’d see in a dentist’s office. He made them work for it, as much as he could between the exhaustion and being mostly tied down and beat up. One by one they unbuckled his limbs and then locked them onto the chair. When at last he was restrained, he closed his eyes and focused on coming up with a good insult or racial epithet for these fuckers. (What was red? Tomatoes? Flowers. Pansies? No…)

He had plenty of time to think. Once he was secured, the demons all cleared out for a while, and he was left not much better off. He could see the scrapes on his arms and legs from his work in the stone cell under the merciless, clinical light.

The demoness came back, a Styrofoam cup in hand that steamed. He bet it smelled like coffee. (Not that he could smell anything, since he couldn’t draw a bloody breath!)

She stood at the foot of the chair, one arm across her chest, the other holding the cup as she sipped at it. She smiled and made a small appreciative sound before setting the cup aside. “Well, let’s get started. I suppose you’d like that gag removed?”

Spike just glared at her. He’d always been told he had expressive eyes. He hoped they were expressing “fuck off”.

She motioned to someone out of Spike’s view and he felt fingers moving on the tight buckles at the back of his head, pulling hairs as they hastily undid the fastenings for the huge gag.

It felt a bit like vomiting, his throat convulsed, helping the nasty thing on its way. He took a gasping breath, which was a mistake because the cold air felt painful on his raw passages, and blood flecked the lab coat in front of him as he coughed. He closed his lips and tried to force himself to swallow a few times before his over-eager lungs could hyperventilate.

“Before you speak,” the demonness placed one long talon on his lips. It felt smooth, like it had been filed. Given the perfect cone-shapes of her talons, they probably where. “Keep in mind that you are at my mercy. No one can hear you, no one will come rushing to your rescue, and no, I can’t make your treatment here any better, but I can make it a great deal worse. Are we clear?”

Spike glared at her.

She took her hand away as though he had nodded. “Very good. Now let’s take a look at your throat. Open up.”

Spike glared at her with a raised eyebrow.

She stabbed him in the thigh.

“Bloody hell” He looked down to see what she’d stabbed him with. Oh, so that was why she filed her claws. Her pointer finger was buried to the cuticle in his flesh. She twisted it.

“Let me make this clear. You will obey. Disobedience will lead to pain and disfigurement. Every time. There are no exceptions.”

“You sadistic bitch!” His jaw, still burning from stress, popped with his yell and he was sure he felt something tear.

Another twist, and a needle-toothed smile. “I’m not sadistic. I’m just doing my job. Now, open wide so I can check your throat.”

With his lips as close together as he could get them, Spike growled, “Burn in hell.”

And then had to clench his teeth, despite the ball of fire it awoke at each joint of the jaw, to contain his howl as she applied her talonned fingers to his balls, crushing them.

“Let’s try that again? Open.”

The only response Spike gave was the rasp of his breath through clenched teeth as he tried to pant through the pain. She twisted her hand and a groan strangled into a whine in his throat as she twisted, turned, and practically pulled his balls off.

“You don’t want to lose these, do you?” She released pressure and playfully weighed the sack in her hand, the subtle motion sparking each new injury.

Spike gasped, two deep breaths, and said, “You’ll tear me limb from limb before you make me your lap dog.”

The demoness laughed and leaned over his body. “I was right. You are going to be fun.”

She chuckled and planted a kiss on his cheek as he strained to get away from her.

Spike snarled and snapped at her, but she managed to move out of fang-reach without hurrying. “Well, now, no sense ingraining bad habits. We’ll just get on with the medical exam. Retractors.” She straightened and held one hand out to receive the torture implement.

Spike held his teeth together until they might split from the pressure, but between them, his torturer and her assistant got the retractors into his mouth and cranked them open as far as they went.

“There. Was that worth all that effort?” She wiped her hands off and took a sip of her latte.

Spike’s jaw was creaking, bolts of pain shooting out in all directions at being stretched again, and saliva built up in his mouth and gurgled in his ravaged throat.

The demoness pressed against his tonsils with a dental mirror and hummed to herself, stopping to take notes between presses that caused his gag reflex to rise.

When she was satisfied with her perusal of his throat, she dropped the retractors two clicks and wrenched them out of Spike’s mouth, almost taking his back teeth with it.

He coughed and spat.

“Now,” she said, setting the retractors aside. “Are you hungry?”

She was back to the friendly stewardress act. Spike glared at her.

“No?” She gestured for someone to come forward. It was another demon in a lab coat, carrying a bright orange Coleman cooler. “Because we do employ the carrot as well as the stick.” The cooler was set down on the floor and she opened it, taking out a Red Cross donor bag, swollen with dark red blood.

Spike’s stomach twisted inside him. He swallowed hard to keep it down. “Not gonna beg for it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I would be very surprised if you did. No,” she held the bag toward him. He could smell the plastic, that familiar, particular Red Cross vinyl-whatever. He swallowed more drool. “All I’m going to ask you to do,” she said, waving the bag oh so close to him, “is open your mouth.”

Spike tilted his head to the side, a weary expression on his face that made the torturer laugh. With a sigh, he opened his mouth.

“So your pride does have limits,” she said. He almost closed his mouth, but then she was pouring the blood into it. He glared at her over the bag.

When the bag was drained, she pulled it away with a smile and a smug, “Just remember how easily you gave in next time I ask you to do something.”

He spat the last mouthful of blood at her. It was worth it to see her shock, and the blood splattered over her white hair, her expression, one eye fluttering closed against the dripping gore.

She slapped him, hard, open-handed, and rushed to the sink to wash herself while Spike chuckled.

He was feeling better already, the blood soothing his throat as it went down, knitting small injuries.

“Right,” she came back, running a hand over her wet hair and checking it against her horns. “K’zaal, get me the flaying kit.” She slapped Spike, hard, her talons leaving little rips in the cheek that felt cold and wet until the blood started seeping. “And a stimulant drip.” She put her knee on his leg and grabbed his balls again. “You won’t fall asleep on me this time.” She squeezed and twisted, then pushed up, ramming her sharp nails into the smooth flesh of his perineum. “Now tell me… when this hurts.”

***

After his “physical”, Spike was poured back into the oubliette with an IV stuck in his arm, dripping blood. He was shaking – whether from the stimulants or the shock or both, he couldn’t tell, but the shake was making him ache in all his joints and there was nothing he could do but try to be still, if possible, try to hold his head up, against the rock, so his chest and stomach weren’t pressed into his knees, let the air get to the bare muscle there and wait for the skin to grow back.

Healing itched, intolerably, like tiny mites scurrying under the skin, and that added its own note to the symphony of pain as he pressed into the rock and bit hard at the gag. Rhythmically he bit, chomp chomp chomp – it was soothing. He imagined it was the bitch’s neck.

***

He must have passed out at last and been taken to the “psychiatrist” because next thing he knew, Spike was awake, alert, and not in pain. He was also clothed, unfettered, and sitting on a hard wooden seat.

Spike found himself, in fact, at a school desk, very like the one he’d had… no, it was, in fact, identical to the one he had in school. There was the faint half-moon of ink from when the bottle had spilled, and the scratch in the pen-tray. He jumped, and was thwarted in taking his feet by how small the desk was – he could barely fit between the hard bench and the writing surface. And he looked down at himself in chagrin to see that he was wearing knee britches. In adult size. Now that was kinky.

“So what’s the agenda today, Doc? Going to talk to me about my school days? Get me to cry because the other boys wouldn’t be my mates?”

“Oh, hardly.” Mr. Giles walked out of the gloom, a leather-bound volume in one hand. “I thought rather I’d talk to you about your mother.”

Spike felt a momentary spike of fear in his stomach, but he quelled it. No sense giving the bastard ammo. “You’re slipping, Doc. Old Rupert doesn’t mean bollocks to me.”

“We both know that’s not true. My manifestations are drawn from _your_ mind, remember.” Not-Giles pointed with the spine of his book and raised his chin, as though looking down his bifocals at Spike. “Now, to you I represent authority, knowledge, wisdom, maturity.” He lowered his chin, revealing a knowing smirk. “All those qualities you feel you lack.”

Spike laid his hand on his chest. “Oh, I am wounded.” He threw himself back into the chair, hoisting his legs up onto the desk. “Do your worst, Rupes. It’s fun just watching.”

The shade of Giles sighed in a very Giles-like way, rolling his eyes upward as though to appeal to the heavens. Then he walked three steps forward and set his book down, on a desk that appeared just as the book touched it. A classroom then flooded out from that point. Chalkboard, eraser tray, floor boards, and tall windows, dwarfing the small room and flooding it with sunlight.

A shaft fell over Spike’s stocking-covered legs and he yelped, pulling them back. He glared at the windows. Only one had the shade drawn part-way, allowing shadow to fall over his chair but not the desk surface. “This is a dream! That’s not bloody fair.”

“Of course it isn’t fair, you idiot. This whole scenario is designed to be unfair. I’m attempting to break you.”

“I’m not going to crack.”

“Of course.” Giles rolled his eyes ceiling-ward with a faint smile. “All you have to do to defeat me is become emotionally well-adjusted.”

Spike folded his arms and scowled. “Berk.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I promised this a while ago - but it just wasn't working, y'know?  
> And then I got all distracted by other projects...
> 
> Anyway, here 'tis! The next chapter of Finders, Keepers, this time with (virtual)Spiles!  
> And more school kink than you can shake a wooden ruler at. ;)

“Shall we begin the lesson?” Giles ignored Spike’s scowl and tapped the chalkboard with a wooden ruler. Like a click of a powerpoint presentation, the chalkboard suddenly changed, now having scrawled along the top in neat chalk letters: “The So-Called Love Life of William the Bloody”.

“Oi!”

Giles merely rolled his eyes and set down his ruler on the desk. “Stand and recite.”

Spike snorted and raised two fingers at Giles.

Giles nodded and picked up what looked like a rather old, clunky remote control. He pressed its one button and Spike flailed in sudden electric-shock pain.

“Bleeding hell!” He stumbled out of his seat and pointed at Giles. “What the fuck?”

“I know. It would be much more efficient just to make you do what I want, but my colleague Areize insists that conditioned response is vital at this point in your training. Frankly…”

Spike lunged forward, mind full of the satisfying feel of Giles’ neck between his hands – he wasn’t really Giles so no chip fire, right?

He was stopped almost instantly, the shaft of sunlight in front of him as impenetrable as a stone wall. The stone wall of an oven, because it burned as he pressed against it and he had to hop backward.

“As I was saying?” Giles waved his remote control. “My dream space? I call the shots? Are we clear? Now, stand, please, and recite.”

With a hard-edged smirk, Spike put his hands behind his back, lifted his chin, and said, “There was an old soldier from Kent, whose cock was incredibly…”

The chip-fire shock had him falling against the hot barrier of sun again and he fell, “Ah! Shit!” and then back against the sunbeam behind him, no less penetrable. “Fuck! Ah! Shit!”

“I could watch this all day. Very entertaining.” Giles pressed the button again and this time Spike threw himself down sideways, hands clutching the wooden seat of the school desk while he tried to blink away the pain.

Giles cleared his throat. “I did not give you a subject to recite. Do get yourself under control, stand and recite on the topic I am writing on the board.”

Spike was still squinting at his own hands, phosphors flashing all over his vision. He heard the slick and clack of chalk writing on slate and resigned himself to look.

Under the heading, Giles had written: People Who Enjoy Having Sex with Spike.

“Oh, fuck you, you dried up old prick. Is this how you get your jollies?”

Giles smirked and wrote, “Rupert Giles” under the sub-heading.

“Oh now you’re having me on.” Spike pulled himself up to rest on the chair, sprawling sideways as much as the space allowed.

“Hardly. I suspect the old boy was rather bent. If you had been more cooperative – or less cooperative – as his guest you just might have found out _how_ bent.” He tilted his head, smiling as though at a fond memory, “Hmm. Yes, it makes perfect sense to me, based on your past interactions with him. Now then, someone else?”

“I’m not playing your game.”

Giles sighed, wearied, and pointed the remote at Spike again. He made a pained noise and fell forward, gripping the desk hard. Smoke rose from his fingertips where the sunlight just brushed them.

“We only have twenty four hours of simulated time and I do want to get through this half-hour lesson plan. So let’s cut the crap, shall we?” He started writing. “Drusilla, I believe we can take as a given. Angelus, too. Delicious, that memory of your last time together. I don’t normally get material like that just handed to me. And Buffy. She’s made no secret of her enjoyment. Or rather, she has, but not from you.” He glanced over his shoulder with another smirk.

“How about adding your mum to that list?”

With a smirk that could chisel glass, he wrote, “Your Mum”.

“Hey now, wait a….”

“I know, you staked the poor bitch before she had a real chance, but if we’re leaving ‘Giles’ on the board we ought to leave her.” Giles sighed and turned to admire Spike, flailing helpless, banging his fists against the invisible barrier, making no more sound from his scorched knuckles than his mouth produced, opening and closing impotently, no doubt in the pattern of a string of curses. “I should punish you instead of just taking away your voice, but really, I’m not such a firm believer in conditioned response.”

Spike stopped flailing. The skin all along his forearms sizzled and stung from contact with the barrier of solid sunlight. He clenched his fists and charred skin cracked and split. He set his jaw in a firm line and dared this imposter, with his eyes, to just keep angering him.

“Well, we could go on with this list forever. You get my point, and there’s no sense inflating your ego,” Giles said, and sloppily added “et al” to the bottom of the list as he walked to the clean end of the chalkboard. “Now, this category, I suspect, will be somewhat different.” He brushed away a bit of chalk-dust with the back of his hand (and why create the room with dust already on the chalkboard?) and wrote: People Who Love Spike.

He turned, eyebrows raised. “Anyone? Class?”

Spike made another rude hand gesture.

Giles rocked back on his heels. “You can talk now, by the way. Or is it just that you have nothing to say?” He smiled as if that was his fondest wish realized.

“Dru loved me.”

“How disappointing. You start with a lie even you don’t believe.”

Spike’s shoulders slumped, and then he just threw his hand like he couldn’t care less. “Yeah, I get it. Nobody loves me. Big bad vampire here. The vermin of the demon world. Why should I give a rat’s tit?”

“But you do care.” And here came an almost un-Giles-like leer. “I do feed off of negative emotions, you know.”

Spike resumed his seat, draping one leg over the back of the chair. “And I am a tasty, snacky treat. Lucky me. Eat up, you old shirt-lifter.” He picked at the cotton leggings like he was curious about the weave.

Giles sighed heavily. He picked up the remote, and the wooden ruler. “Stand and recite.”

When all Spike did was examine his left hand, poking at a charred flake of skin, Giles, of course, activated the remote, causing Spike to nearly fall out of the chair – precarious as his perch was.

“Stand and recite.”

“Get bent.”

This time, Spike had to cling to his own thigh, making a high, involuntary sound as Giles held the button down long. “I will certainly not tire of this before you will. Come here.”

Spike’s laugh sounded half-mad, coming between pants of pain. “I doubt that. Never was the schoolmaster could outlast a stubborn child.” And then, as he convulsed with the next shock, he sputtered, “See? ‘S right!”

The remote clattered against the back wall of the classroom. “I told her: pain only works if the subject actually fears pain! Now get your arse down here, William!”

And Spike, chortling his victory through the spasm-inducing agony, was shocked and horrified to have his body spring up, straightening against muscles that were so tight the tendons burned and felt liable to pop out of his skin.

And if he could have, he would have flinched at passing into the sunlight. But now, obedient to the psychiatrist’s whim, the light fell on him as harmless and weightless as the glow of an incandescent lamp.

He almost passed out, in the walking down to the front of the room, his body cruelly pushing past any pain, that left him with a feeling that his skin was far too tight or his bones too large.

But then there he was, next to the podium, blinking away little black stars, and the pain seemed to melt away – no doubt as controlled as his own body by the psychiatrist’s mind.

“I’ll give you one last chance, William. Before you are disciplined. Explain to the rest of the class, please, what today’s lesson is about.”

And “Giles” gestured with his ruler back toward the student desks, which had been empty and now were filled with all the faces, long forgotten, of his own primary-school class.

Timmy Wilson, right in the front row, raised his thin eyebrows expectantly, a smug look on his snotty little face.

Spike turned on Giles. “This is sick, even for you.”

“Oh, you’ve no idea of my perversions, my boy,” Giles said, laying his hand on the small of Spike’s back, he whispered conspiratorially, “but don’t worry, we’ll have time.”

The wet, hungry sound of his voice made Spike think of tentacles, and slime, and the possible disposition of his body at this particular moment, and he shuddered.

“Go on,” the image of Giles stepped back, hand trailing off his back with a disturbing, fond pat. “Tell the class why no one loves you.”

A group of boys at the back of the room snickered. “Oh you have got to be fu… ow!”

Giles had rapped him on the head with the ruler. “Language,” he said, with a gleeful smile.

“You really think this is going to traumatize me, Rupert?” Spike rubbed his head and gestured at the schoolroom audience. “I’m over this. I might have killed some of these blokes – don’t even remember, but the fact that I _might_ have speaks more than enough, doesn’t it? Childhood insecurity has no power over me anymore, mate. Give it up. This whole thing makes you look sad.”

But Giles was smiling still, and had to work to pull a stern face. “Oh, dear. I see you shall have to be disciplined after all. Drop your trousers, please, and bend over the lectern. On this side, so all your classmates may see.” He patted the front of the podium, which seemed to shrink just a bit, to an appropriate height.

“Get bent.”

“Don’t make me force you, William, it will be worse.”

Spike opened his mouth to ask incredulously what the wanker thought could be ‘worse’, when he found himself efficiently dropping trow and folding his arms over the front of the lectern, resting his forehead over them… and wriggling his arse.

The classroom erupted with giggles.

He would have muttered a few choice words, but once again found himself mute. A warm hand caressed one exposed cheek. “Does this remind you of your school days yet, William?” A hard cock, covered with scratchy tweed, pressed tightly against him. “Or of your father?” More giggles, snorts, and some whispered conversations. Spike struggled to speak, but all he could do is feel the blood pooling under the skin of his face as he strained.

The wooden ruler made a loud crack, and like thunder following lightning, a line of hot pain blossomed on one cheek. “Twelve raps, I think, for cursing.” Crack! The line landed, frigid as ice, then heated up to a burn just before the next stroke landed. “Another twelve for failing to answer.” The next blow landed especially hard, and he was sure he could feel the trickle of blood. “And twelve more because. I. Feel. Like. It.”

The blows increased in speed and weight, and Giles was grunting with the effort, the wooden ruler whistling through the air. Despite himself, Spike found his hands tightening on the sides of the podium, tears threatening the backs of his eyes as the classroom filled with cheers and laughter.

When you were in pain, it was hard to remember, that this was just a dream, just a fake scene in a sick demon’s mind. Spike clenched his teeth and hung on to rage. Each burst of burning pain he imagined inflicting on the slimy ball of tentacles.

“Tsk. So unimaginative.” A hand carded through his hair and then tightened into a fist, lifting his head back away from his arms – arms that twitched and tensed but would not rise off of the lectern.

The sound of Giles undoing his flies was loud, the room suddenly silent again. “Like me. Another example of your lack of intelligence. You saw Rupert Giles and immediately thought he reminded you of your primary school teacher, and now, not two years later, you can’t remember the teacher’s name or face, because Giles always interposes himself.”

A broad, rough thumb separated the cheeks of his ass with a hard swipe, almost burning as it passed over sensitive tissues. It then ran back up, then down, then pressed in. “Like your pathetic brain can’t hold more than one concept at a time. Tell me, is it the drugs and alcohol? Or some artifact of the poor nutrition of Victorian times?”

“Or is it… one moment please.”

A cock rammed into him, hard and fully in one stroke, sending the usual jolt of pain up his spine.

“It’s what they want from you. It’s what I want from you.” The tugging on his hair grew harder, pulling the scalp away from the skull so he had to look up, see the simple lesson on the chalkboard, all the names there blurring. (And how disgusted he was with himself for crying.)

The voice was wet and thick in his ear, invading him just as surely as he was invaded below, pushing all out of its way, owning, using. “Sex,” he said. “Dear boy.” And he thrust languidly, groaning deep in appreciation. “Is what you were made for. Is that so hard to understand?”

The groans vibrated, tickled up his ear canal. The pain dissipated, as it always did, leaving only the sick feeling of violation, the thick cock sawing in and out, never letting him forget or ignore, the pelvis fetching up against him tight and then retreating, a softer spanking, perhaps, but driving a worse pain before it.

“You ought to be grateful, filthy beast. You have a lovely arse. That’s more than nothing. More than you deserve.”

Spike clenched his teeth. He wasn’t going to enter into the bastard watcher’s game.

And then he hissed a breath, because Giles rocked his hips, canted them down and glanced off his prostrate, and despite everything he began to feel pleasure in his own debasement.

And he was forgetting, just like the demon said he would, when in pain, forgetting it wasn’t a dream.

It was hard to remember, when you could smell chalk and dust and blood and sweat and feet; when it was such a complex, perfect tapestry of a lie.

Not-Giles tore at his absurd over-sized school jacket and pushed sweating hands under, grabbing Spike’s waist to push him down in time to his thrusts. “You like that, don’t you? Dirty, dirty boy. You like taking it up the arse from you teacher in front of a crowd.” He pressed down further, ramming Spike into the hard wooden edge of the lectern. “Should we start a queue? Would you like that? Who would you like to fuck you next?” Giles’ chin was rough with stubble, sharp and biting in the flesh of his neck as he tried to turn his head away. “Shall I send them in age order? Or by their academic standing?”

“Fuck you,” Spike said. It was meant to be a shout, but came out almost a sob. He tried again to shake the bastard off, but his own limbs were firm.

“No, dear boy, wrong again.”

Spike’s stomach rolled up against his ribs as his body started to respond, pushing back, flexing into each thrust without any of his own intention behind it. He was trapped, ineffectual, in the body of a writhing whore, and his mouth started spilling forth a litany of “God, yes, Rupert. Like that. More. Harder. Own me, take me. I’m a bad boy. Very bad…”

He spilled his seed on the unvarnished wooden podium as Giles seized against him, flesh adhering to flesh with sweat and spunk as he seemed to come for hours.

And then Spike had the use of his body again, and control of his voice, and he fell against the side of the lectern, slid to the dusty floor, sperm leaking from his torn ass and his lowered pants twisting around his legs, binding as he tried to wriggle back into them.

He glanced up and saw twenty pairs of eyes staring at him, faces masks of pure shock, and he looked away, horridly embarrassed.

Good thing Angelus wasn’t in this particular horror show. He’d laugh at the soulless demon who can’t help but worry about what the children must think.

A rough hand cupped his chin, forcing him to look up with strength those fingers never had in reality. Twinkling denim-colored eyes crinkled with mirth. “Are you crying? Oh how charming.”

And Giles leaned down to kiss him, very gently, on his trembling lips.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of my massive epic Slave Fic! Still in the "Breaking Spike Down" phase.
> 
> Warning: Het alert! Spuffy and Spru mentioned! (Have to protect the delicate sensibilities of my slash fan friends!)

Spike was losing touch with when he was awake and when asleep. They often drugged him and took him to the “psychiatrist” unconscious. And his own dreams were starting to resemble the bizarre situations the psychic demon made up for him.

The only times he knew for sure he was in the real world were his “physicals”. As humiliating and often painful as they were, he was starting to look forward to them.

_He is in a cage, naked, a collar chained to the floor in front of him keeps his back arched, his head down._

_Drusilla runs her hands over the top of the bars, her dress swishes, diaphanous fabric reaching between them. He has to twist and strain to look up at her._

_“Poor Spike. If you’d only been a good dog, I would have kept you longer. I must have my pleasure, you know. But you cared more for your own desires. You left me cold.”_

_The soft fabric brushes over his elbow. “You’re not really here.”_

_Her eyes widen. “I’m not?” She looks quickly behind herself, then crouches to whisper, “Where am I? Is it somewhere nice?”_

_“Bugger off.” He forces himself to look away. It’s hard. Her beauty makes him feel a small measure of comfort, and that’s a trap and he knows it. “You’re not Dru.”_

_“Am I princess then?” She stands, leaning over the top of the cage, her arms crossed on it. Her hair hangs down, brushing his cheek and ghosting over his neck and shoulder. The pleasure of it is painful and makes him shiver. “Or your ripe, wicked plum? Oh! Am I Miss Edith? I suspect sometimes I am, and she is me. Or we are the same.”_

_“Yeah. You’re a dolly. A big fake dolly with a head stuffed with calamari.”_

_She laughs. “Bad dog!” she snaps her teeth and makes a puppy-like growl. Her long fingernails wriggle, she pushes her hand between the bars. “Here puppy. Let me pet you!”_

_He closes his eyes and tries to wait the dream… vision… reality… whatever it is out._

_After a while, Drusilla starts to cry. She sobs brokenly and bangs her head against the bars of the cage. “Horrible man. Cruel! You left your princess. You never cared for me!”_

_Spike knows its an illusion – he’s almost 90% sure – but he can’t help straining against his bonds, making shushing noises, trying to calm her. “There there, love. It’s all right. I do care. I was an awful rude man, going after the slayer. Should have just concentrated on you. On making you happy.”_

_She pouts, cheeks wet and tear-tracked. “Didn’t care enough to end the world.”_

_“Pet, we live in the world.”_

_“There. You always think you know better than Princess. You think your sanity is so important. But I see so many things you don’t. I know what love is, and you never will. Poor Spike.” She leaned her head to the side and reached far in, her fingernails just scraping his arm. “I shall have to tell Daddy how I saw you. We’ll have such fun.”_

“Did you know you’ve been with us only two weeks?” Areize smiled and flipped a page on her clipboard. “You’re coming along nicely. Good enough that we can stop all this molly-coddling.” She set down the clipboard and leaned over Spike, shinning a pen-light in his eyes. “Tears. Wonderful.” She wrote on her clipboard. “Surprised? Those twenty-four hour simulations with the Psychiatrist actually only last twenty-four minutes. He’s been begging to increase your appointments to a full hour.” Her needle-grin was close to his face. “Apparently, your mind is just _delicious_.” She licked her lips with a long, serpentine tongue.

He looked away, as much as the binding on his head would let him, and muttered, “You’re chipper. Got your coffee right this morning?”

“Ach!” her lascivious manner faded and she went back to checking his mouth and throat. “You have no idea how hard it is ordering in with the dimensional time-gap. We have to order a week in advance and if they get your order wrong you have to alternate portal drops and the minions take forever to get back.” She waved a hand. “Starbucks should just open a shop here.”

Then she reached down and squeezed his cock. He strained against his bonds and glared at her. She laughed. “We have GOT to get you started on some erection training. You’re no use to anyone like this.”

Like any man could get hard with those cold talons resting like knife-blades against his cock. Spike gripped the chair rests; it was the only motion he could make to steel himself for the pain he knew was coming.

Filthy demon had a disturbing interest in his cock.

But instead of her usual protracted “play time”, Areize just gave a few tugs, a twist, and a fond pat before returning to her clipboard. “Get him out of here and tell Stanley I’m ready for the next one.”

The usual servitors dragged him out of the chair, his bonds designed to be fastened at all times. He always struggled, anyway. You never knew when you’d get lucky. And he fucking hated that tiny dark cell, where he could smell nothing but himself and hear nothing but his own breath. (When they allowed him to breathe.)

His wrists were clipped together behind him, his arms chained down, and he was kicked to the floor. His eyes fastened on the small metal door that led to his prison.

But they led him away.

The hobble bar between his knees and the short chain between his ankles made him unable to do anything but shuffle, half-bent, behind them, and he fell repeatedly, each time kicked and shouted at in a demonic language he didn’t understand. Some times they just dragged him. The floors were smooth stone, but rough enough to tear the skin off his knees after two draggings.

They took him pretty far away. As hard as it was to move, it might have only been twenty yards; it felt like twenty miles. By the end he was using every ounce of strength, willpower, and mind he had just to keep on his feet and keep moving as fast as possible. His knees and toes were bloody.

The smell was driving him mad. They hadn’t fed him in days. Or maybe it only felt like days.

He stumbled and nearly fell over again when the demon holding his leash stopped. A clawed hand caught him and pushed him upright so he could see where they were.

He almost fell over again. It was the cage from his dream with Drusilla. For a moment of vertigo, he wondered if it really was a dream.

They slid open a small door on one side and shoved him through it. He fell on his face.

Hands were all over him, scratching him randomly with claws as they removed his bindings. Belatedly he remembered to struggle and kick, but soon enough he was locked in the cage. His hands were still bound behind him, the spreader bar still between his knees, but his ankles were loose and the leash gone. He crawled to the bars and rested. There was just barely room to sit up with his head bowed, and the cage was not long enough to lay down. Still, it was open, there was light, he wasn’t gagged or blinded. He snorted. “Oh yeah, really hurting me now. Wankers.”

Of course the psychiatrist had probably seen the cage already. It was probably their standard cage. Nothing strange about it being in a dream. He bit his lip and knew he was awake. Of course he was awake – he was hungry.

He shifted until he got vaguely comfortable. There weren’t a lot of ways he could sit with the bar between his knees and his hands behind him, but he managed. The place was a wide corridor, like a shopping mall. The wall opposite him was partially black glass and he could see his cage reflected in it. There was a potted plant of some weird pink fern variety, and pleasing, near-natural light.

Then demons started walking by. He gawked. Families with little horned kiddies and strollers. Most of them were obviously Areize’s race, but some were different demon species, and he saw a few humans. Some stopped to look at him. A family stopped. Little kids holding on to the bars and practically leaning their heads into his cage. Spike flashed his fangs at them and snarled. They squealed in delight.

“Feeding time!” A male voice announced. Spike wondered if they spoke English for the humans walking by, or his benefit. Either way a small crowd formed, watching him.

“Bugger off. Haven’t you seen a naked vampire before? Sodding perverts!”

He wished he could flip them off. His shoulders were aching from having his arms behind him so tightly.

The zookeeper – that had to be what this was, he realized, the bloody slave-training-grounds zoo – approached with a bucket of blood. Spike felt his stomach contract at the smell and had to swallow back a mouthful of drool.

Then they affixed the feeder to the bars of his cage. He snarled. “For the love of Christ!”

A big, shiny pink dildo – all realistically veined and textured with a slit that was real and probably pressure-sealed to release the contents when sucked on. “How fucking cute.”

Spike turned his head away, sourly facing the choice between dignity and sustenance. His stomach was practically clawing at his ribs, telling him not to be such a pussy, swallow his pride and get the humiliation over with.

He told it to fuck off.

He sat in his only comfortable posture, enduring stares and jibes and the occasional poke through the bars by a stick or a talon. He snarled and tried to bite them, but of course they were always too fast. He mashed his face on the bars a few times to a general uproar of laughter.

He smelled the blood slowly spoiling in the feeding bottle, until it was no longer torture for being appetizing, but torture for stinking.

They took their sweet time about taking it away.

The light never changed, but the visitors petered off and stopped. He tried to find a way to lie down – the only option, really was on his back with his knees up and his legs against the bars. It wasn’t comfortable for his arms. He tried his side, but that made whichever knee was on top start to feel like it was slowly being punched out by an awl.

He knew eventually he would give in and eat from the humiliating feeding bottle. That was worse than the pain in his joints or the cold or the feeling of being naked in a cage on display.

***

“Spike’s gone?” Angel blinked. “And that’s not… good?”

Buffy scowled. She was looking around the Hyperion lobby as though it was offensive to her somehow. Angel found himself glancing around, too, wondering if maybe they should have repaired that broken molding by the stairs.

“People don’t just freeze in place the moment you leave them, Angel. Things have changed.”

“I’m not…” Angel folded his arms and scowled back. “Spike’s not ‘people’. And I’ve known him a lot longer than you.”

Buffy threw up her arms and crossed to sit on the lobby sofa. “I don’t believe I’m the pro-Spike bandwagon. No wonder he’s so defensive all the time.” She pulled her legs up on the sofa next to her and wrapped her arms around them. “Angel. Please. Don’t argue with me about it, okay? I just want Spike back. I mean, come on. For all I know, he’s gone evil again. And shouldn’t I know if that’s the case?”

Angel closed his eyes, briefly. “He hasn’t gone evil.”

“What? You know something?”

Angel held out a hand to forestall her excitement. “If Spike had gotten the chip out, I’d know. There’d be a trail of bodies.”

Buffy bit her lower lip. “You’re probably right.”

“And the trail would most likely lead here.”

Buffy gave Angel a small smirk, but chose not to challenge him on that. “So are you going to help look for him? Do I have to…” she waved toward the counter, “Open an account or something?”

“No. This one’s on the house.” Guilt nagged at him, an itch on his conscience. Angel felt like he could catalogue a hundred different flavors of guilt. This was a new one. “Look, I may have heard something. Demon slave traders. They… we’ll they’ve been around. Someone like Spike would be just what they’d want.”

Was that worry, on her face? For Spike? Was that guilt getting a little sharper? He hastened to add, “I don’t think they have him. But it’s a place to start. Spike’s distinctive. If he’s been anywhere in the LA area, someone in the demon community will remember.”

Buffy stood. “Thank you.” She hugged him, her cheek warm against his chest. “I know you hate him, so thank you for doing this for me.”

“I don’t hate him,” Angel said.

When Buffy looked up, he just shrugged.

***

Spike made a decision, the next morning. As soon as they came with the blood, he drank. Fuck it.

He sneered and leered and stuck his tongue out at the zookeepers. He’d had an epiphany over the night; he could do this. Take the debasement intended to devour his pride and let it slide off. Bend and not break. “You sick bastards,” he said to the demons, as though he pitied them. “Does this get you hot? Keeping me in a cage when you know I could murder every one of you and enjoy doing it?”

They ignored him. Which he told himself was just because they had to. He turned and wriggled his ass at them. “Go on, have a long look. Give yourself something to wank to.”

He was laughing, cold and angrily, his head down by the floor of the cage so he could get a big, vindictive ass-shake in, when he smelled something… familiar. Human, female, power… and under the clay talc of make-up and the sting of perfume, sweet. Wholesome. He blinked and rolled onto his knee, peering out into the sparsely populated corridor. Footsteps approach from around the corner, steady and unhurried, hard heels striking the floor.

He knew who it was before she turned the corner. “Buffy! He hobbled as close to the bars as he could get, pressing his face between, yearning out to her. “You came for me?” His voice broke, disbelieving.

Her footsteps stopped. She was still a few yards away. Her hands raised just a bit, as though to ward something – him? – off.

“Buffy?”

“Um… yeah,” she said. “God, Spike. You sure know how to screw up.”

He squinted, unsure how to read her expression. “They put me in from that side.” He nudged his head toward the cage door. “See if there’s a lock or something you can break.”

“Don’t be stupid, Spike. I’m not going to risk pissing off a whole dimension full of demons just to rescue _you._ ” She folded her arms and started pacing. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me. I have responsibilities – real live humans I have to keep safe.”

“But… you did come looking for me?” He grimaced at the need in his voice. “I… I’m grateful, is all I’m saying.”

“You could have been out killing. The chip could have malfunctioned or broken or something.” She paused in her pacing, looking very tired, bleak. The worst he’d seen her in a while. “I let you live; you’re my responsibility.”

“I’m sorry, luv. Please…”

She held up a hand. “Just be quiet. I have to think, and find the best way out of this.” She turned on her heel and stalked back the way she’d come, unhurried.

Spike sagged against the bars. “Didn’t mean to make life harder on you,” he whispered.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More slave!fic
> 
> Big Het Warning on this chapter, too! Thanks for putting up with the plot-necessary girl bits. The boys will all get a chance to play with Spikey in future chapters. *plots and bwa ha has*

It felt much longer than a day, waiting in his cage, getting colder and more aware of how ridiculous he must look every minute as he re-played those few minutes with Buffy over and over again.

How she must have seen him!

He hit his head against the bars in irritation at himself, and ended up a little light-headed, which wasn’t good.

He was fast learning that staying anywhere but the farthest back section of the cage resulted in being touched and poked through the bars. He could smell the residue of all these casual touches, like the army of scents on a well-used dollar bill, oiling up his skin and making him want to smash things.

But there was a hope, sharp as broken glass, in his chest. Buffy was figuring something out – something to get his unworthy corpse back to good old Sunny-D.

Unless she’d found it too difficult. Not worth the effort. She’d come tell him, wouldn’t she?

The visitors thinned out, and then stopped, and the zookeeper came and took away the feeding bottle and its trace scent of silicone and rancid blood. He curled up as much as he could on his side and tried to sleep.

He awoke when they re-filled the food bottle, feeling strangely ravenous. He saw a smirk on the zookeeper’s lips and stayed where he was, looking down and trying not to remember the pornographic feel of the silicone in his mouth.

He waited the whole day for Buffy to return. He didn’t eat, sleep, or taunt the visitors. He sat with his head on his knee and waited. He almost cried when he woke up and was still there.

When the viewing crowds ended that day, after the usual hour wait for the bottle to be removed with its rancid blood, they opened the cage door. Spike wasn’t sure whether his best bet was to resist being pulled out or try to make a hobbling run for it. It wouldn’t have mattered either way, they hooked the hobble-bar between his knees with a long hook and dragged him ignobly out where a ring of five demon attendants were all ready to deal with any struggling he had to do.

And then there was a repeat of the hobbled crawl back to Dr. Areize’s examination room. His hopes were up, though. Maybe Buffy had negotiated something, a release.

He even held on to the hope as he was strapped into the examination chair.

Dr. Areize came in, sipping her coffee like always, her eyes on her paperwork.

“Did you talk to Buffy?” Spike asked.

The demoness raised an eyebrow at him and set about raising the stirrups his feet were strapped too, pushing them as far up and out as they could go.

He bit back a groan as his pelvis started to protest. “Buffy Summers. Blonde girl. Human. She was here. About getting me out of this sadistic outfit.”

Her cold claws lifted his balls and she bent to examine his rear. “We’re going to have to do something about this idea you have that you’re allowed to speak. Speculum.”

This last word was obviously not intended for him, as she held out her hand and her ever-present assistant laid a chrome tool in it.

It had a wide head something like an eyelash curler. Spike struggled to lift his head against the band across his forehead. “What? What the hell are you going to do with that?”

The bitch grinned evilly, and scooped the thing in KY jelly – obtained from a deep freezer, as far as Spike could tell, and started working it into his ass.

There was a click, and he felt the metal – not nearly as smooth-edged as it should have been – spreading him even further apart. And then another click.

“Sodding hell!”

“I suggest you bear down and stop clenching. If you tear I’m going to be quite irritated with you.”

Click. Click.

Like he had any choice. His fingers turned white against the arm rests and he bore down with all he had in him, panting hard against the pain.

When she finally stopped spreading the speculum open, he could feel casual drafts of air deep inside him. “What are you going to be showing movies on my fucking colon?”

“There, there,” she ran her cold, stone-feeling claws over one of his thighs in a gesture that was anything but calming. “These sensors are tricky and I want to get the placement just right.”

All he could do is watch the top of her head, her little horns poking out of her white hair, while she fussed about with sharp metal implements and claws, scraping and poking interminably until, suddenly, there was a “whirr” and Spike was seized with a burning sensation that shot straight up through his cock like he was suddenly pissing lava. His whole body jerked up against the restraints and something tore inside, adding the scent of his own blood to the air.

Areize sighed and stood up. “And you’ve gone and moved. Good thing for you I’m done. Couldn’t see a thing in there now.” She set her hand on the speculum, her weight pulling the handle down and the working end of the instrument up. “Still, I should still punish you for that.” She rolled her shoulders, squared her stance, and took hold of the instrument with both hands.

“You are not going to…” Spike’s panicked words were torn off in a scream as she wrenched the fully-spread instrument from his body.

The ritual of unbinding from the chair and re-binding to be taken away passed in a blur of pain, his whole body just a tattered covering for the throbbing at his center. Only when they tugged his leash to get him to walk, and he fell and hit his head on the floor, did he come back to his senses enough to struggle and shout, “What about Buffy?”

Areize looked up from washing her hands. “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be seeing her soon.” She smiled her needle-smile.

And Spike was dragged from the room thinking, _they’ve got her. They’ve got Buffy. What have I done?_

He decided not to eat. It was a decision that stayed with him a day and a half, and then he was annoyed at himself because the day’s blood was spoiled already when he changed his mind. The pain didn’t get better, the healing didn’t happen without blood.

They left him alone, in his display cage. No one even answered his threats, pleas, or questions. He might as well have been unable to talk.

The third day, he ate, almost as soon as the bottle was in place, he was awake and waiting for it. It was hard to sleep, anyway, with all that pain and no exertion during the day but surviving it.

The day after that, they took him back to the psychiatrist

Walking in on his own power, rather than strapped to a trolly, he noticed how the floor slipped greasily under his feet. Every surface in the office glistened with a sheen of slime that just couldn’t be cleaned away. The demon servitors looked just as disgusted as he was. Still they pushed him onto the psychiatrist’s “couch” and strapped him in.

He let his head fall back, refusing to watch the sickening sight of the psychiatrist crossing the room. “Joy. Time for another session of being molested by the kush-ball. Filthy, stinking, slimey arse-raping…”

Keeping a steady stream of insults up helped keep him from panicking as the warm, wet tendrils slithered over his body. He closed his eyes and breathed hard through his nose, wishing at the same time he could somehow close his nose, the way he clenched his thighs and pressed his lips together. Not that it mattered. The tendrils worked incessantly against him and soon he was standing in the dream world, shivering and pushing with his hands to remove the memory of their touch.

It was a posh bedroom, this time, done up in all the extravagance of Victorian bad taste: printed wall paper with printed draperies with fringe and figured lamps and figured frames on pictures that were lost in the mélange of it all.

“Well,” Spike said, frowning at the darkened window, “It’s not my mum’s house, thank Christ.”

“Dear, sweet boy,” a familiar, breathy voice laughed. He turned to face it. Tucked half behind an oriental screen was a chaise, on which Darla sprawled, her negligee open to expose one creamy thigh. “Wasn’t I, also, a mother to you?”

“Gah. You’ve got the dirty old harlot down, all right. She’d say something like that, just to be insincere. Tell me what happened to Buffy.”

Not-Darla stretched one arm over her head, “Oh, Buffy. I really don’t see what you see in her.”

Spike clenched his fists. “I know you’re supposed to be breaking my spirit here, but if you’ve got her captured, we can end the song and dance right now. I’ll cooperate. I’ll be your sodding sex-slave, if you just let her go.”

Darla’s dimples deepened. She shook her head. “Now you make me wish we had captured her. But really, a slayer? That would be a nasty business to get involved in.” She threw her legs over the side of the chase and sat straight, efficiently wrapping her loose hair up and pinning it.

You could have knocked Spike over with a feather. “But… where is she?”

Darla seemed to think, and then decide. “No, it won’t hurt your training to tell you what I know.” She stood and shook out the skirt of her nightgown, all trailing with ruffles of silk de chine, and then walked to an oval curio table laden with decanters. “I did hear that someone was making inquiries about you – a new bidder from your home plane. Looking at your memories, that’s probably her. But I can’t tell you more. Arieze and I aren’t very high in this organization, you know.” She poured herself a cognac. Spike could smell the sweet sharp scent of it from across the room. God he wanted a drink. She turned to him and took a sip, smiling. “If I had the authority to talk to outside negotiators, do you think I’d be handling slaves directly?”

“Yes, I do. You bloody well get off on this.”

She threw her head back, giving Darla’s tinkling laugh. “I do. I love my work.” Over the rim of her glass, she mused, “Though to be honest, if it was all about my pleasure, I’d just be that Angelus fellow over and over again. Delicious, the emotions he inspires in you. And, well, male is my preferred gender. Works better with my anatomy.” She raised an eyebrow, then tilted her head toward the refreshments. “Oh go on, have a glass. It’s not like this is real.”

Great. Now he could definitely _not_ take a glass. “Why should I believe anything you say?”

“You shouldn’t, dear child. My entire profession is about lying to you.” She sauntered toward him, hips swaying low and seductive. “And you should listen to me. It’s a profession we now share.”

He started to step back, but of course was stopped by the now-familiar paralysis as the image of Darla caressed his cheek. “But you were always too honest for your own good, weren’t you, William?”

“Don’t pretend to be her. I know you’re not.”

Darla’s smile was icy and yet lascivious, in that way only she had. She carded her fingers through his hair. “And how long, dear William, before you start having trouble telling the difference?”

“Bugger off. Buffy’s going to get me out of this. And then I’m going to come back and rip every one of your…”

She placed her fingertip on his lips, and his voice silenced, lungs no longer agreeing to draw in the air. She leaned toward him, tongue just touching the inside of her bottom lip as she tilted their heads together for a kiss.

And stopped. She pulled back, frowning, head cocked as though listening to something Spike could not hear. She sighed. “Ah well. It’s not like I’m getting much done with you in this state anyway.”

Her cool fingertip left his lips, and then he was looking at flesh-colored tentacles and struggling to breathe as they retracted from his airwaves, leaving a seal of slime behind them.

As they pulled his leash toward the door, he gasped, “What is it? What’s going on?”

Of course they didn’t answer, but he was feeling optimism build in his chest.

They took him to a room he hadn’t been in before, with a red clay floor and a drain. He wasn’t entirely surprised when his lead chain was affixed to an eyebolt in the floor and a hose was turned on him.

He was relieved – it felt like ages since he’d been remotely clean. The hose had stinging pressure that made up for its being cold.

They washed him off, unhooked his arms, and left him. He stretched, and the pain of stiff muscles moving felt as luxuriant as anything he could remember. He rolled his head, opening and closing his mouth to feel the extra stretch on his neck. The leash snapped taut against his chest, butted links scratching as he moved, but it was almost an affectionate feel, now he had some freedom.

And then the door opened, and Buffy stood outlined in the brighter light of the hallway. He smiled. “You came. You came for me.” He threw his head back and laughed. “I knew it. Take that, fucking tentacle-beast!” He flipped off the ceiling.

“Spike…”

He froze in the midst of his victorious exaltations to see that, contrary to his vision of events, Buffy was not rushing toward him, nor was she holding any sort of keys, clothes, or get-Spike-out-of-here implements.

Her eyes flicked to the floor, and he knew, then. His joy curled into a ball and fell hard into the pit of his stomach. “You aren’t here to set me free.”

She raised her face. Her jaw was set firmly, her brow slightly crinkled. His heart ached for her just then, this was the Buffy he loved the most – the determined warrior, ready to pay whatever cost.

“I’m making a choice, Spike. It’s my choice to make. You can’t deny me that.”

The chains chimed gently against the drain in the floor as he folded to his knees. “No,” he said. “’Course, love. Always was your choice.”

Her hand touched his shoulder, warm and soft and comforting. He leaned into it, yearned toward her heat. For once, she let him. She stroked his bare back. “I’m going to miss you.”

He barked a short laugh. “Not nearly as much as I’ll miss you.” He nuzzled into her shirt, feeling the softness, the thin layer of flesh over her muscular stomach. “Love?” His voice almost cracked. He bit down on the grief that was building. His voice became strong, assured. “Tell them I died, all right? Tell nibblet… tell them all I dusted. Don’t want them knowing I ended up like this.”

“They’re not likely to ask,” she chided, “but I’ll tell them.” Her hand continued going up and down hit back, along the left shoulder blade, marking a path of warmth and calm.

He wished his whole body could fit in that space. His whole mind. “Buffy? Why did you come?” He blinked back the tears and looked up, to see her face. “Just to tell me?”

She bit her lower lip, tilted her head, and a slight smile tugged the corners of her mouth.

His shoulders sagged. She drew him up to her. “Like a good-bye kiss,” she said.

He nodded. He kissed her, his hands sliding up under the edge of her shirt as she pushed him back onto the wet concrete. The chain got in the way, but she maneuvered him.

He hoped it would be reverent, gentle, loving. But of course it wasn’t. That wasn’t what they’d had.

***

The psychiatrist came down from his orgasm slowly, rubbing his sensor tentacles against each other for the little sparks of aftershock as he disengaged from his unconscious subject.

It was one of his better scenes, if he did say so himself, and he hurried to the computer to type up his report as the orderlies bundled the vampire out of the exam room.

Pity Spike wasn’t as pretty when he wasn’t in his mind. The subjects were never as attractive when he saw them with his own sense organs, though there was something perversely delightful in hardness and simplicity of shape. This one was going to provide years of enjoyment. Once he was really, truly broken, the psychiatrist mused, he could even perhaps indulge in fucking him while he was conscious.

The psychiatrist felt another jolt of lust, and his tentacles shuddered. He sent a message to his administrator that he needed a few minutes alone before the next subject was brought in.

By god, he loved his job.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last! She breaks out of the writer's block! Woo!
> 
> I made the mistake, though, of re-reading this story before I started the chapter. Um, dudes? Do tell me when I make typos, okay? Man, it was nigh unreadable!!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Spiley! Het!
> 
> Spikey is continuing to have a rough time of it. (Bwa ha ha ha)

The air ripped free of his lungs as his back slammed into the crumbling old concrete pillar. A rain of dirt and broken plaster fell around him. Spike didn't know if this was memory, dream, or something else. Riley Finn's large fist held him fast while the point of that plastic stake dug into his chest, not yet penetrating the muscle, just pressing into the skin. He could smell his blood and feel the sharp pain whenever he tried to breathe. Riley's face was a grimace of anger, sweat glistening as he leaned close, driving that point deeper, between ribs that groaned in protest. He hesitated a moment, eyes flicking down as though just noticing the body in front of him, and then his lips were pressed to Spike's. Stubble too fine to be seen lent his cheeks a sandpaper roughness that contrasted with his soft lips, which pressed insistently, demanding, while little grunts of anger and arousal escaped the farm boy's throat. A knee shoved Spike's legs roughly apart and lifted him against the cracked pillar. He felt Riley's cock, hard as stone, pressing into him through two layers of denim, and still that stake stayed pressed, ready to plunge into his heart.

Spike twisted, trying to pull his mouth away, close it, trying to escape, but Riley was strong, and his tongue forceful, not allowing any argument, kissing like punches. Spike felt weak. Blood-starved, maybe, but his mind wasn't on the pulse that was beating against him in a hundred points of contact, electric and alive and thrumming.

Not a memory, then, and Spike wasn't sure that the stake was plastic, this time. When Riley finally broke for air, Spike said, "Now you're really stretching, doc. Iowa boy wouldn't kiss me."

The not-Riley shrugged. "Only because he's about as straight as new-planed oak." He leaned forward, nuzzling with surprising strength, forcing Spike's head aside with a gesture that looked gentle, he breathed hot puffs of air on his ear. "But really, it's your fault. You could have turned things this way with a look." He let go of the bundle of shirt he'd been holding, twisted tight and threatening seams, to slide his palm down Spike's torso, groping appreciatively. His hand was too hard on Spike's cock, squeezing, so Spike rose up until his neck was even with Riley's mouth, and as if it was an invitation, hot human teeth latched on. The pain was sparking like pleasure, and Spike groaned, feeling himself falling into the pure sensation of the moment.

"You like this, don't you?" The fake Riley shoved him harder against the pillar, digging in with hand, dick, and stake.

"Not like I have a choice." Spike gritted his teeth. "May as well."

"You always have a choice. All this is, and has ever been, is teaching you to make the right ones."

Coming from Riley’s mouth, it sounded all too wholesome, like a lesson on how to be a good boy scout. Except, of course, for the pressure on his dick, the hard hands gripping, and now tugging his fly open, hand reaching in, cupping and pulling him out, over the jagged bite of the zipper.

“Fuck off,” Spike said, letting his head rest against the pillar, his eyes closed. “Not like anything matters anymore.”

He felt the chuckle deep in Riley’s broad chest. “God, you’re sexy like this.” His teeth nipped at Spike’s neck and his hands turned gentle, wriggling between his jeans and body, stripping him bare with careful urgency.

“Don’t tell me you never thought of this,” not-Riley added, trailing kisses down Spike’s chest as he stooped to push his jeans down to his knees.

“This? No.” Spike shook his head. Despite his resolve to cut himself off from the scene, his eyes opened, and he watched their wavering shadows on the cobwebbed ceiling.

He tried not to feel, not to care. It wasn’t like he could fight this – even he figured some things out, eventually. Thick fingers prepped him with just a little burn. He bit his lip, not wanting to make any sound and give the bastard the satisfaction.

Then he felt the spongy head, sliding against him, pressing his cheeks apart and…

Spike tried to crawl up the pillar. “Aw, fuck! Exaggeration, that is!”

“Hey, it’s _your_ imagination.” Riley smiled smugly, one hand on the organ in question, the other firmly holding Spike by the hip. “You can take it.”

Spike struggled. The demon let him, but made sure he didn’t succeed in escaping. He had far more strength than Riley would have had, and speed too. Spike slipped out of his grip just once, enough to fall to the floor, but he was grabbed again before he could get up to crawl away, his jeans bound around his knees impeding him. Bits of broken stone and dirt ground under his elbows as he tried to wriggle out of the inexorable hold on his hips. The demon didn’t hurry, just hauled him back by the ass, and re-positioned himself. Spike sagged in defeat.

“Good boy,” Riley said, soothing a hand over his lower back. Which of course made Spike bristle and fight anew, kicking as best he could, back against thick, muscular thighs that seemed unmoved by any impact. Riley chuckled. “Stop, that tickles.”

His large cock was nudging, knocking at the door, and there was no way it was going to fit, until it did, skin stretching and tearing. Spike clenched his fists in the dirt, gasping his way through the pain. Slowly, agonizingly, his insides were rearranged around that monster cock. Every other second he was sure it could go no further, but still it did, until Riley’s slim hips were fetched up snug against him.

“There. See, told ya.” His large palm, lightly calloused, ran over the small of Spike’s back, soothing away the pain.

When he could speak, Spike tried to affect a bored tone, “Are you going to get on with it? I have a busy afternoon staring at the bars of my cage planned.”

Not-Riley made a small motion and… fuck, it felt good. Spike pressed his face to the cold stone floor, biting his lip.

“Don’t be in a hurry, Spike. We both know this is the best your day is going to get.” His hands slid down, along the curve of his pelvis, and he moved gently, making tiny thrusts without pulling out while his fingers glided toward Spike’s cock.

Sweat was breaking out all over Spike from the sensations, and blood was welling from where he bit his lip. He felt like he would split in half, but the pressure inside him was intense, the friction of small motions sending white sparks behind his eyes. All too soon he was gasping from deep in his throat and straining back to meet the gentle thrusts. A warm palm wrapped around his cock and slipped up and down, sending new sparks flying along his nerves.

With a great effort of will, Spike swallowed back a moan and said, “You… trying to make me like this.”

Riley leaned over his back, sweat against sweat. The angle change moved his whole lower half, and he did groan.

“No, Spike. You’ve always liked this. I’m just reminding you.”

***

He came out of the dream, gagging on tentacles. So they weren’t going to sedate him this time. The orderlies stood ready, eyeing him warily as the psychiatrist rolled over to his computer to type his notes. All very scientific, Spike was sure. He spat a wad of snot after the thing.

As they took him off the platform his hip-sockets felt loose. The tentacle beast had really reamed him. He wondered how many limbs the thing had up him – and worse, how much of the pleasure had been imaginary. He felt the hollowness left behind, and the sickening trail of slime making its slow way down his thigh.

The orderly took his arm and gave him a very stern look. Spike sneered.

Spike still fought, every time there was an opening: transfers, washings, inspections. He put up a struggle when expected. It almost became a sort of grammar between him and his handlers.

Hello. How are you? Jab elbow into face. Same old.

He knew, and they knew, that he couldn’t escape. So it was just a polite concession to his need to struggle. He wondered, though, how long before he’d just stop altogether.

They chained him in the washing room. He stopped struggling as soon as he saw the red clay floor under him. Being clean was so rare he didn’t even want to pretend. He lifted his chained wrists toward the eye-bolt they usually attached him to, and relaxed back on his heels. He didn’t mind the harsh spray, or the hard nubs of filed-down claws working the soap into his back. He found himself leaning back, opening his mouth, trying to catch the spray and wash that distinctive slime-taste out.

Normally they let him sit in his cage covered in the psychiatrist’s mucus until it dried and flaked off. It left a smell behind, sour and sick, like spoiled milk.

They were finishing up his back when Areize came in, wearing her white lab coat as always, she stood by the door, hesitant to get her high heels wet.

Spike rolled his shoulders, enjoying the scratching he was getting, that banished the memory of all that soft touching. “For fuck’s sake, can’t you bleeding lay off for a sec? Or, hell, take turns?”

Areize smiled her disturbing needle-smile. “We are on a schedule. All done, Stan?”

The head orderly sighed and ran his claws once over Spike’s scalp. “Yeah, that’s as clean as he gets.”

“Ta,” Spike snorted.

“Dry him off,” Areize said.

That was an unheard-of luxury, and Spike squinted at her, wondering what the deal was.

Also wondering what the little white box she was holding against her cheek was. It looked like an iPod.

Stanley got a rough terrycloth towel out of a cabinet and briskly dried Spike off. The other two orderlies excused themselves. Areize watched with mild interest, tapping the little white box against her cheek. When she was satisfied – and Spike felt a layer of skin had been rubbed away – she nodded, and Stan stepped back.

“I’m sure you’ve been wondering what that implant I put in you is for.” Her smile spread wider than a human face would have allowed, showing more sharp teeth. She waved the little box. “Shall we see what happens when I activate it?”

“Probably lodged in my throat now,” Spike growled.

She laughed, and pressed the button, holding the remote up and to her side, like activating a powerpoint slide on the wall behind her.

Spike expected pain, he didn’t expect the sudden strange ripping feeling exploding up from his groin. His back arched, the chain from his cuffs digging hard into his front, but he couldn’t help the reaction, making glottal sounds of shock and pain as he gaped, breathless, at the ceiling.

“Don’t worry. It will get easier with time.” The gritty sound of her heels hitting the clay floor echoed loudly in the silence as she approached.

His spine relaxed as her shadow fell over him, the pain ebbing enough to grant him control over himself again. He straightened, and then leaned forward, to alleviate the sharp pain of the chain cutting down the length of his very hard penis.

“Oh,” he said, looking down at himself. His cock was angry, red, and painfully hard. It looked swollen. He wondered he didn’t see blood leaking out of it.

“Perfect,” Areize said. She kicked off her shoes and set one hand on his shoulder, pressing the hard remote into his bone.

“I’m not your type,” Spike growled.

Up close, her smile was even more frightening. Her breath smelled of stale coffee. “Baby,” she said, “you’re everybody’s type.”

Her hand on his cock made him strain against the chains again, teeth clenched against the too-sensitive feeling. She sank down against him, the crisp lab coat crinkling against his bare skin. He twisted as much as the chains allowed, trying to get her off of him. “You bitch!”

She nipped at his earlobe, teeth slicing skin just as easily as it looked like they would. The smell of blood just made him angrier. The chains groaned against the eyebolts in the floor, his knees and the tops of his feet scraped and tinted the air with more blood as he fought with what he could, snarling and snapping his jaws at her. She laughed and dodged his bites easily.

He hadn’t been with a woman since Buffy. It felt like that’s how it should be. The demoness grabbed his hair at the back of his head and tugged hard, down, stretching his neck and removing his teeth from contention as she slid down onto him.

Hot, wet, soft – he tried to ignore the sensation. At least the pain from his forced erection helped him not enjoy it too much. The pain was fading, though. He grit his teeth and jerked on the chain again to feel the cuffs bite into his wrists.

The pleasure was building, hot and tight like shame in the bottom of his gut, like the pressure of her hard, small breasts against him. Her breath was hissing through her wet, narrow teeth.

Having those teeth near his exposed neck added just a little twinge of fear to the overall disgust and helplessness. Unfortunately he was hard-wired to turn fear into lust. He was going to come, and soon. He twisted and struggled, eliciting delighted sounds from the woman riding him hard.

Then she really did sink her teeth into him. Sharp pain. It felt exactly like being gouged by a row of uneven needles. (And thank you, Angelus, for that comparison, he thought wryly.) He felt his balls draw up and his hips snap upwards and a shot of white hot pain flashed through him. He screamed, then bucked furiously, trying to dislodge her.

“You evil bitch! What did you do to me?”

“Made you better,” she moaned. “Oh god. Yes! Keep struggling, baby!”

Areize worked herself off against him, as the pain abated and pleasure built again. Spike felt sick, like he wished he could sink away from his skin and the stink of satisfied demon-woman.

Again he felt a climax building in him, against the pain, the humiliation, the anger. He thrashed and fought against it, jerked against his chains every way he could, while the demonness squealed in delight.

The second time was even more painful than the first. Like his insides tightened into the point of a needle and then were dragged out through his dick and shoved back in.

At last she reached her climax, jacking herself up and down on him with brutal force and groans. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Ghaaannn!” She bit him again, right over the adam’s apple. Cartilage crunched like plastic and he felt his windpipe close with the pressure, choking off a scream. His lungs burned with want.

Sweaty demon skin leaned on him, making him support all her weight. She licked the side of his face and at last let go of his hair. He snapped, and nearly got her as she leaned back, dislodging herself.

She stood and adjusted her skirt. Spike shook with rage. “Get rid of it!” he demanded. His cock was practically buzzing.

She looked down at him, slowly shaking her head. “What _are_ we going to do about that attitude?”

Spike wanted to dislodge his own skin and get away from it. He seethed, knowing the whole experience was driving him just a little mad. “Please,” he hissed.

She picked up the remote – she’d dropped it at some point. “Are you a slave, or a prisoner?” she asked.

“Is that a fucking trick question?”

“No. See, a prisoner can rant and rail all he wants, he’ll get nothing. A slave can ask nicely and sometimes be taken care of.”

“Fuck off.”

“Yes, I’m well aware you consider yourself our prisoner.” She set her hands on her knees, leering into his face. “But you’ll only leave this place as a slave, so you might want to start thinking about swallowing that massive pride.”

Spike raised his chin defiantly, not deigning to respond.

She sighed and straightened. “You know, I’m going to have to implant an activation button. The traditional spot is in the nipple, but I’m undecided. I rather like your throat.”

Blood trickled down his chest. He glared at her.

“Well, Stanley, I’m done. Is my three o’clock going to be on-time?”

“Should be.”

Spike cringed; he hadn’t realized the orderly was still there.

Areize turned and walked out into the hall. Stanley stepped up to Spike and started unfastening the chain between his ankles from the eyebolt in the floor. Spike jerked away from him. “Wash me off,” he said.

Stanley snorted. “Yeah, right,” he said, and gathered up the lead-chain. “Man, you are some kind of stupid.”

As soon as the chain attaching his wrists to the floor was freed, Spike threw himself hard to the left, actually wresting the chain from the Stanley’s claws. Still hobbled, he managed an awkward crawl-lope to the door and out into the rough hewn corridor.

A shrill whistle sounded behind him. Orderlies came from everywhere. He swung his bound hands into one and bit hard into a shoulder, tasting acrid demon-blood and cotton.

Blows rained down on him, and an electric prod hit him in the back, causing his spine to go rigid and his vision to blink out.

He shuddered and flopped like a fish on the bank – it was all he could do, but still, he fought to the last thread of his ability. As he sat in his cage, licking the wounds he could reach (which was pretty much just his knees and forearms), he took comfort in that.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's been FOREVER. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa!
> 
> Chapter warnings: Gang rape and, er, H/C. *cough*  
> You'll see. Spike doesn't have the best time of it.

Spike no longer looked forward to the washing room.

This time they had four orderlies, just to make sure he didn’t bolt, and the more restrictive chains made him barely able to crawl.

Which didn’t stop him from balking at the door when he saw the room was full.

Men lined the walls – human men, most wearing collars and not much else. They were all naked below the waist, and all hard.

Spike was wrestled into his usual position at the center of the room, over the wide, flat drain grate.

No, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out these gents weren’t just in line for the hose-off.

Arieze came in with her evil clip-board and white coat. She paused, lowering her spectacles to look unaided at the assembly. “Great selection, Stan! Are these Laziel’s stock?”

“Some,” Stan said, with a hint of pride in his casual voice. “I pulled in a few here, a few there.”

Spike struggled against his chains, trying at least to straighten his back. They had him down tight, and his vision was still swimming from the struggle. Black high-heels and red legs walked past him, unrushed. “Oh, very nice selection, indeed. All human?”

“One hundred percent. It wasn’t easy.”

“Don’t break a wrist patting yourself on the back, Stan. That one, I think, to start with.”

The claws holding his shoulders to the floor let up and Spike was able to see the demoness leading one of the collared men to stand in front of him.

Spike scowled up at the demon doctor, ignoring the hard cock that was practically poking him in the cheek. “If this is feeding time, I have some bad news for you,” he said, dryly.

“How many men are in this room?” Arieze responded.

“Not enough to intimidate me.”

She rocked back on her heels. “There are fourteen. Tell me, do you want to service all of them?”

“Be better than fucking a skank like you.”

“And they say predictable response is a good thing.” She grabbed hold of his hair and tugged, forcing his head back. “It’s choice time, sweetheart. You can suck this boy off and go back to your cell to enjoy all the comforts of being a waste of flesh. Or, refuse, and they will all get a turn. Personally, I’m really hoping you refuse. It’s been a while since I got to watch a gang bang.”

 

She gave his head an extra little shake and let go, stepping back.

The slave standing over him – he couldn’t be anything but a slave – gazed blandly in front of himself, not focused on anything, seemingly not caring. His cock was interested, though, solidly hard and glistening at the tip with just a drop of moisture.

Spike licked dry lips. “Go to hell.”

Arieze lifted her chin with a smug, victorious smile. Yeah, he was predictable. Goody on her. He closed his eyes – didn’t listen to her calm orders to the troops. Hands grabbed him, many pairs. He tensed and strained, reflex mostly – there wasn’t a lot of play in his chains to let him struggle. Spit-slicked fingers jabbed hard into him, a quick and dirty preparation that shot sparks of hot pain up his spine. No time was wasted and a blunt cock shoved after those fingers, banishing one pain with a greater.

He vamped out and snapped at the man in front of him, only to be hit by a chip-headache that tunneled his vision and left him straining to get a hand to his head, because it felt like his skull was going to explode outward and nothing short of tactile confirmation would help.

But all he could do is groan and cut his skin against the unyielding chains as his body was rocked rhythmically.

Slowly the pain gave way to the sick, sliding violation, the feeling of being used. He was aware of the pulse inside him, the sweating hands gripping his hips, and then the gush of ejaculate and the vulgar sound of slipping free. The hands on his hips dug in, pushing off, and then another body was there, cooler, drier, and slamming in to him, jarring sore tissue with fresh pain.

Clawed fingers gripped his head. He snapped at her – he could snap at her – and she slapped him. “That’s one down, sweetheart, thirteen to go. Some of these boys will take a good long time. Those artificial erections… well, you know how they are.””

Spike jerked back against her hand, howling as she activated the sensor. Forced blood flow ripped through tissue as roughly as the cock ripped into his ass. Yes, he knew how they were.

It seemed to take forever. More sweat dripped over his body, scenting him with the filth of another slave. His muscles spasmed and his bones quaked.

After the second man finished, Areize left. He was only dimly aware of her sharp heel-clicks and her order for Stan to get her if anything interesting happened.

He felt sick, and loose, as though his body was falling apart like an over-cooked chicken. Behind him he heard faint grunts, little pants of breath as his current attacker urged himself on to completion. Spike tried to count - it was the only thing he could think of to occupy his mind, but that inevitably centered on the thrusts coming into him, which didn't diminish the experience but only made it seem even longer.

This fellow was in danger of taking as long as the last. If he wasn't miserable, he'd be bored.

He wanted to scream “Come, already!”

“Uh… uh uh uh… huh-UNGH!”

Hips pressed hard into him, so he could feel the outline of the bones, and the cock twitched, reminding him of the dimensions of damaged, wet flesh.

“About time,” Stan muttered. Come on, we have a schedule to keep. Who feels more ready than that? You.”

Spike clenched his ass, felt come and blood spill as another pair of hands settled in almost the same place.

“He looks like he’s dozing off. You – keep him awake.”

Another pair of hands stroked down his back and pinched behind his neck. He shook at the contact, flesh jerking as though he could knock the hands off like a fly.

The smell and rhythm of sex continued, and the grubbing hands. Two more took their turns, and each time he thought it wouldn’t be as bad as the last, but it was.

When Arieze came back and asked him if he would suck one of them off in exchange for an end of it, he nodded mutely, face turned away in shame. But he already felt like he wanted to crawl away from his own skin, coated as it was with so many fingerprints.

Hands kept stroking him, holding his jaw and helping as he opened his mouth.

He gagged, gorge rising, and he choked, but two sets of hands were on his face now, stroking, prodding, gentling.

Obscene slurps echoed his empty desire just to get it over with. The slave didn’t push into him, didn’t grab on and take over, he had to do it all himself, and know he was doing it, until at last the man’s breath hitched and his hands tightened, and he thrust hard, deep into Spike’s throat.

And that done, another took his place.

Spike didn’t even feel surprise that the bargain was a fake. Strong hands laced through his hair and tugged hard, bringing his face up. He pressed his lips together, though the strength was leaving him and even this action made him tremble with weariness. He swallowed, mouth dry and salt-tasting. The cock-head nudged his lips, hard, once, twice, and his token protest was over.

Spike felt his whole body go limp as his mouth and ass were used simultaneously, reducing him to just a pair of holes and the shaking, faulty structure that held them up.

***

“Shh… shh… easy.”

Everything hurt. Spike rolled on his side, surprised to be able to do so, and coughed until salty liquid came up.

“Easy!” Someone wiped his mouth. A hand rubbed circles on his back.

He shivered. “Fugoff,” he said. His jaw ached and his throat felt raw all the way to the middle of his chest. He tried to push whoever it was away, but his motions were feeble, the hands were strong.

“Take it easy. Jeez, Spike, you’re only going to hurt yourself more.”

Spike froze. Carefully, he opened his eyes and rolled his head back. “Angel?”

“That’s it. Just relax. I have some blood here for you.”

The bed dipped as Angel got off of it. Spike craned his head to watch the familiar shape cross the room. They were in a hotel, some anonymous place smelling of tobacco and disinfectant. He ran his hand over the sheet next to him, feeling the stiff, cheap cotton. “Are you real?” He asked.

Angel turned back, squinting at him in a very Angel-like way that could be both disbelief and frustration. Without any reply, Angel opened the mini-fridge and brought a Styrofoam cup to the bedside. “It’s pig, but that’s just going to have to do.” Angel grimaced as he pulled the plastic lid off. “Don’t say I never did anything for you."

That, too, was very much like Angel.

He held out the cup of blood, but when Spike’s hands failed to support it, Angel gave a heavy sigh and sat on the edge of the bed again, gathering Spike up to lean against him and feeding him the blood.

“How… how did you find me?”

Angel’s face was unreadable. He set the now-empty foam container down. “Can you walk?”

Spike grabbed his arm, stopping him from slipping off the bed. “I want to know, Angelus.”

Angel grimaced. It looked like he wasn’t going to answer. “Accidentally,” he said, at last, and stood. “Come on, let’s get you in the shower. You stink.”

A slight motion, trying to sit up on his own, awakened a hundred aches in Spike’s abdomen. It also caused him to inhale quickly. He did stink. He smelled like a none-too-clean locker room, all spunk and stale sweat. He looked at Angel with a mixture of horror and embarrassment.

Angel was standing a few steps away, jaw stiff and pointed away. He wasn’t breathing.

Spike gritted his teeth and scooted to the edge of the bed, feeling his hips moving independently of each other, loose in their sockets, and the flesh between gaping open, brushing against the rough sheet.

Somehow he got onto his feet. His legs were weak, and his tendons complained, not used to being stretched to full standing. Before he thought better, he reached for Angel to balance himself, and nearly fell as he was brushed off.

Angel mumbled, “Sorry,” and with strong, sure hands grabbed Spike’s arm and steadied him.

Spike couldn’t look at him. The help, grudgingly given, was worse than the refusal. But he let himself be supported to the bathroom and into the shower.

Angel left him leaning against the wall and bent to turn on the water. It was an older tub, where you had to turn on the taps below and then pull the knob to make the water divert to the shower.

“Not going to join me, this time?”

It was meant as a joke, but it came out almost pleading. Spike hit his forehead against the wall in annoyance.

The pipes shrieked as Angel pulled the knob. Water hit Spike hard, smelling of calcium and iron.

“For fuck’s sake, wash yourself,” Angel snapped. A washcloth hit Spike’s back.

He turned to see Angel slam the bathroom door as he left.

Leaning hard against the wall, Spike fumbled with the paper-wrapped soap until he got it open and told himself the tremors were just relief at being free at last.

And it was good – infinitely good – to wash the grime and smell of shame from himself, to move his hands freely. How long had he been shackled? He ran his hands over himself, reveling in the power to do so, to feel his own body, slick with soap. He took stock of his injuries. Gingerly he worked the soapy cloth between his ass-cheeks, hissing at the pain, but knowing it needed to be done. The smell stayed with him, no matter how deeply he scrubbed.

The water turned cold, but he wasn’t clean yet, so he kept going, with shaking hands, working the soap masochistically into every wound, until he fell.

The ground just gave out – or more aptly, his legs did, and he hit the tub hard with one hip. His hand grasped the shower curtain, stupidly, and ripped it down on top of him. The soap flew across the room to leave a greasy smear on the steamed-up mirror.

The door opened. “Jesus Christ, Spike.” The water stopped, groaning as the knobs were wrenched off.

Spike struggled to disentangle himself from the wet plastic curtain.

Dry hands hauled him up, easily as a child, and slammed him against the bathroom door. “Are you that damaged, or are you just punishing me, you little shit?” Angel’s face was a mask of fury.

Spike gasped, finding it hard to get the air back into his lungs. “Punishing you?”

“For last time. And the worst thing is, I actually felt guilty when you gave me that bullshit about staking my territory.” Angel shook Spike. “I wouldn’t touch you if I had to, Spike. Why go where everyone else has gone before?” Angel let go of him, stepping back with a look of pure disgust, he snatched a clean towel off the rack above the toilet and wiped down the front of his suit, where Spike had pressed to him, leaving traces of moisture.

After a tense, startled moment, Spike barked a hoarse laugh. “You’re not him.”

Angel sighed. “You’re completely nuts.”

Spike smiled. “Not buying it, slimeball. You’ve made two big mistakes.” He laughed outright, falling a little. He caught himself on the doorknob.

Angel’s stupefied expression quickly melted into amusement. “What, was I too kind?”

“I thought about him ‘staking his territory’, but I never said it to him, and Peaches is too dense to pick up on something like that, no matter how bleedin’ obvious it is.”

Not-Angel dropped the towel and rolled his shoulders, casually, like an actor stepping out of role. “And what was my second mistake?”

“He’d go where every man has gone before. Angel doesn’t let go of his possessions, even if he doesn’t want them. Maybe especially then.”

Angel sauntered up to him, crowding him against the door. Spike stiffened, flattened himself against the cheap wood. Angel licked the water from his cheek and shifted his hips to come flush against Spike’s. “You know, I almost had him rape you in the shower again, but I hate to steal someone else’s material.”

“I passed out. In the wash-room.”

Angel sighed. “This whole being-in-touch-with-reality thing is getting old. How long do you take to break?” His hands shifted down Spike’s body, groping hard, awakening old injuries. “Of course, I did have you washed off first. You really did stink.”

A sudden, horrible thought gripped Spike. “Buffy was never here, was she?”

Again, he smiled Angel’s lopsided smile. “Would I tell you, either way?” His cheek brushed against Spike’s, feeling just like Angel’s, and his teeth nipped at the flesh just under his ear. “Come on, Spike. You want to be a possession.”

A deep shudder wracked him as he was gently touched, possessed. His voice came out weaker, more tremulous than he would like. “No. Fuck, mate. For a psychiatrist, you know shit about people.”

Angel’s warm chuckle thrummed through his frame. “Don’t I? Sh… let’s change this scene.”

Spike jerked – he would have fallen, but he was already sitting, on a plush cushion of sapphire velvet. The pain was gone, every vestige. His skin was unbroken, smooth, and glowing with health. He stretched his arms before him, seeing the muscles flex easily. There were rings on his fingers, thick gold ones with rubies and emeralds. A chain clinked, he turned to find it trailed from his neck. Angel sat on a wide throne in an open-necked white robe. The golden chain made delicate noise as he wrapped it around his fist. “See? Isn’t this better?”

Spike wanted to protest. He started too, but the psychiatrist’s will was in place, silencing him, making him crawl up velvet-covered steps to the caressing hand of his sire.

It was warm here, and comfortable, and despite his lack of say in it, Spike did relax into Angel’s lap as he was stroked and fondled like an expensive pet. “You want it, Spike,” Angel kissed his forehead and cheek, nuzzling him, cat-like. “Why else would you have given in so easily?”

Spike stiffened.

“Sh. You know you did. You wanted to give in even sooner, in the washroom. I watched your memories, boy. I know how you just couldn’t wait to wrap your lips around some cock and get it over with.”

Like in a bad dream, Spike fought impotently against his paralysis.

“And even now, you want this to be real. Comfort.” A large hand passed completely over his front, from collar to groin. “How easy it all could be, just to give in, mm?”

Angel gathered Spike close, pressing body to body, and delivered the death-blow with a soft murmur, “And let’s face it, Spike: this is the only form of love you will ever know.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Finders, Keepers! Oh you are all so very patient with me. ;)  
> (Or not so patient, but really, whatcha gonna do? :P )

Buffy folded and spindled the sales program through fifty lots of weird crap. There were talismans and amulets and sacred knives – all of which, she was sure, would be just fascinating to Giles, but right now she was wondering when they’d get to the vampire.

“They’re selling him,” she said, not for the first time. “I can’t believe they’re just selling him like a… like whatever that is.”

Angel grabbed her arm with a look of panic.

“What?”

“You almost bid on the crown jewels of Silestra.”

Buffy crumbled the remains of program in her lap and squinted. “Those are crown jewels? Ew.”

“Yeah, they sever the… uh, you’re probably better off not knowing.”

Buffy shot him her best “Ya think?” and sat back to survey the crowd with, she hoped, very much not the look of someone there to buy a vampire sex slave.

What did a person who bought vampires look like, anyway? She found herself frowning at various members of the audience, wondering who was going to bid on Spike. She hoped it would be someone fragile and not too oozy.

“Lot sixty two – the vampire.”

Buffy found herself clutching Angel’s arm with both hands as Spike was led onto the stage. Her heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her, up through her throat.

Spike had always looked larger than he was. There was a veneer of arrogance and confidence over him, besides the physical layers of his clothing. She hadn’t known what she would find under his black cotton and leather when she first kissed him, but she’d felt the promise of that hard body and then, when she’d finally seen him stripped bare, it was all the more beautiful for the illicit feeling of secret, that she saw him as few others had. Now his body was on display to an auditorium full of disinterested strangers. Delicate gold chains swayed against places only her hands should go.

A strangled, “Buffy?” woke her to the fact that she was wringing Angel’s arm like she would like to do to the neck of the smug slave-handlers who were putting their grubby hands on _her_ vampire to guide him into place.

She let go and mouthed, “Sorry.”

She kept her eyes on Angel, then, not wanting to look at the stage and lose control of herself again. It was hard enough knowing he was there, without seeing him so strangely still and subdued. Angel’s face was stern, maybe a little pained, and her heart went out to him. She was quickly realizing, through the occasional unguarded look or word, that there was more between Angel and Spike than simple malevolence.

And then Angel raised his hand. Buffy blinked, heard the auctioneer calling numbers and pointing, and Angel raised his hand again.

Buffy struck Angel’s arm down. Under her breath, she hissed, “What are you doing?”

“Bidding.”

She blinked at him, waiting for him to realize what was wrong with this picture. The auction continued around them, Angel’s arm twitched under hers, wanting to raise it again.

She glared.

“What?”

“Full copper re-pipe,” she hissed.

Angel squinted at her.

“Never mind. We are not giving money to the evil auction. We see who buys him, and we take him from them.”

Angel nodded, brows knit. “Right. Of course.” He settled back in his chair, eyes on the auctioneer, hands folded in his lap.

And there was that look again: pain and guilt.

Buffy found Angel almost as hard to look at as Spike right then. She bit her lip, reminded herself that she was the slayer, damn it. She was on a mission. She scanned the audience, taking note of each person who bid, where they were sitting, who was with them, how hard to kill they appeared.

A smartly dressed businesswoman was locked in a bidding war with a blue-skinned demon. Buffy didn’t like the lascivious way the demon ogled Spike, and she liked even less the woman’s smirk, as though this were all a very amusing but not too important game. She didn’t want either to win, and kept glancing back, silently urging one of the wimpier-looking demons to bid.

The gavel struck, and the blue-skinned demon leered in eager anticipation of claiming his prize. The business woman shrugged and examined the catalogue for the next item. Bitch. Buffy turned to Angel and tilted her head toward the back exit. He nodded.

Buffy was silent as they exited the auditorium and moved to their pre-planned position, a corner of the parking lot from which they could see both the front and back exits of the building. She watched resolutely for a while, but as guests started exiting and the blue demon still didn’t show, she started to pace. “You’re sure he can’t get out another way?”

“Not unless he’s going to open a portal to his home dimension in the lobby or something.”

Buffy whirled on her heel. “What?”

“Which wouldn’t be a consideration if you’d let me just _buy_ …”

She held up a finger, silencing him. “A world of no. Stay here, I’m going to check inside.”

“I don’t think we should…” Buffy turned and jogged away. He finished to himself, “… split up.”

***

“He’s a beauty.”

Appreciative hands stroked Spike’s back, dipping down to rest possessively on his ass. The winner of the auction – his new master – smelled overpoweringly of lust and the sickening, electric-wrong of dark magic. His hands were calloused, and ended in hard, ribbed claws. He kept his eyes down and leaned into the stroking. Any master was better than no master – better than staying in the training dimension. He felt how tenuous his hold on his mind had become and now feared nothing so much as he feared losing it completely.

“Look at me, lovely.”

Spike let his head be lifted and raised his eyes to the demonic face before him. A claw-tipped thumb brushed over his lips. Spike let it pass into his mouth, passively, and when the demon put pressure on his tongue, he sucked gently at the digit.

“And you’re sure he’ll mind?” The demon did not look away from Spike as he addressed the handler behind him.

“We offer the best training money can buy, Mr. Kaal, but if you are displeased in any way in the first seven months, you can return him for a free refresher course.”

“Down,” the demon said, and Spike sank to his knees, careful to go straight down as he was taught. “I must take possession immediately. I can’t wait longer.”

“But sir, you’ve already… ah, I see. Very well, I’ll wait outside.”

The door opened and closed behind the handler. Spike was alone with his new master for the first time. Boney hands shook with urgency as the demon undid his flies and once again stroked Spike’s lips with his thumb. “You know your business, lovely?”

Spike nodded, very shallowly, and opened his mouth. The first taste was acidic and bitter, like grapefruit, but not the worst thing he’d been ordered to take into his mouth. The shape was strange, ringed with hard nubs like calluses, like the demon’s claws. He nibbled around them and was rewarded with a groan of delight and fingers tightening against his scalp. The demon thrust into his throat, and Spike took him gladly, grateful to be doing well, to make a good first impression.

And there was still alive in him a tiny spark mourning that he cared to.

The demon was nearing completion, he gripped Spike’s head hard and thrust erratically. The rings of tougher tissue sawed at his throat and he struggled not to gag or choke.

When the demon’s cock ripped free of him, Spike assumed it was just to come all over his face, which he did, but the hot, acidic jizz was soon followed by a splash of hotter blood and he looked up to find Buffy in front of him, the demon’s head in her hands.

She threw the head on top of the body. “Get up, we’re leaving.” She didn’t look at him.

Out in the hallway, people were coming and going, unconcerned that a petite woman and a vampire dripped demon blood on the rose carpet. One man did approach Buffy, bowing and asking if there was something he could help with, but she ignored him, storming past with an expression that brooked no arguments.

She pushed her way through double doors. Spike followed, and stopped a moment, when his face hit fresh air and he smelled… so many things. It had been a long time since he’d been in the open.

Behind him, someone shouted, and there was the sound of running feet. Buffy turned and grabbed his wrist. “Come on!” She jerked his arm nearly out of the socket, running with all her speed across the parking lot. Spike’s bare feet slapped the pavement after her. They ran toward a dumpster. A figure stepped out of the darkness.

“I found him,” Buffy snapped, not stopping.

Spike turned to see the figure following them. It was Angel. He wasn’t surprised. It was always Angel, if it wasn’t Buffy, or Dru.

They reached a low brick wall and behind them came a spate of gunfire, sound ricocheting off the wall as little puffs of brick dust exploded. Buffy and Angel threw him over the wall. He lay where he landed, waiting to see what was next. They landed next to him. Buffy looked at him with confusion, all of a second before grabbing his arm and urging him to his feet again.

Buffy and Angel were fighting. He wasn’t sure what to do. Help? Get out of the way? He hated not knowing. His head hurt, trying to remember what it was he would have done, in the past.

She kicked her opponent away and then was pushing Spike ahead of her into a black convertible.

“Could you at least pretend to help?” She put her hand on the seat beside him and shouted over the back of the car, “Angel! Leave him, lets go!”

There was the sound of a body impacting pavement and the car lurched as Angel jumped into the driver’s seat. He smelled the engine coming to life, the tires leaving streaks on the pavement, and the wind, now coming fast over him, drying the liquid on his cheek.

Spike touched his face. The delicate chain around his wrist pressed into his chin. He began to shake uncontrollably as he started to think that this was really happening. This was real.

He scrubbed his cheeks with his fingertips, trying to dislodge the sticky mess, the scent of the demon. Trying to scrub away the awareness that he was free, and that Buffy had seen him on his knees with a mouth full of some anonymous demon’s cock.

The convertible lurched awkwardly up and over a curb. Angel shouted, “What happened to waiting for them to come outside?”

“I improvised. Gah! Look out for the…”

“I see it.” The car lurched again, tires squealing.

Spike drew his legs up in front of him, wrapping his arms around him as much as the chains would allow. The cool old leather seat cushioned him, and he stared at Buffy and Angel, their stern faces. Angel drove. Buffy half-stood between the back and front seats, looking back, watching for pursuit, her hair whipping in her face.

He remembered her looking just like that, on a previous rescue attempt. One that wasn’t real. He remembered there was something she said – something just a little too cruel, and he’d felt the cold realization of falsehood fall over him like a blanket of lead. “You aren’t here,” he’d said, and the psychiatrist had laughed.

“Oh, your face! It’s priceless!”

“Has she… has she _ever_ been here?”

The psychiatrist, in Buffy’s guise, just straddled him, leaning down for a kiss he could not refuse, while the scene around them faded into black.

Spike pressed his face into his knees and waited for the fade to black.

***

“That went well,” Angel groused, holding up his arm to examine the crossbow bolt sticking out of it. He poked at the puncture point, not sure if removing the bolt would hurt his coat further.

Buffy grabbed the shaft and tugged it free.

“Ow! I was going to do that.” Angel gripped his arm, trying to hold the bloodflow back lest it ruin the leather.

“It’s almost sunrise. We have to get going.”

Angel looked significantly out the front door of the Hyperion, where the first watery light of dawn was creeping over the buildings, and then back to Buffy. “We lost them long before I turned toward the hotel. We’ll be safe here. I’ll…” he caught sight of Spike, sitting where he’d been set, on the lobby’s round sofa, holding his legs to himself. Angel had been about to say he would get Spike settled in, but he found himself unsure how to even start. “Lorne?” he called, instead, walking toward the grand staircase. “Fred? Who’s here?”

Buffy’s sharp footsteps followed him. “I can drive during the daylight, you know. We’ll just bundle Spike up.”

Angel turned, his foot on the first step. “You’re planning on taking him back to Sunnydale?”

Angel and Buffy exchanged nearly identical “Duh” looks.

“Spike lives in Sunnydale,” Buffy said.

“You were just going to dump him back in his crypt?”

“Of course not.” Buffy crossed her arms. “Why are you acting all defensive?”

He shifted to face her, one hand on his hip, the other on the banister. “I’m not being defensive. Why are you so impatient to leave?”

“Uh, hello? Freaky evil demon slave traders? I’m about ready to go back to the nice, boring hell mouth.”

“With Spike.”

“That would be the point of the whole ‘rescue mission’ thing. Why do you care?”

Angel looked uncomfortable. “I don’t. I mean… why do you?”

“You thought I’d leave him here?”

“If you want to, you can. That’s all I’m saying.”

“No.”

They both turned to see Spike standing, facing them. “No,” he repeated. “Thanks, but you’ve done enough, yeah? I’ll go.” His hands moved over his chest, trying to cover himself. The chains chimed gently against each other. “Just… can I borrow some clothes? Old pair of sweats, whatever. I’ll be out of your hair.”

Angel and Buffy both took a step toward him, and both stopped, and looked at each other.

“No one is going anywhere,” Angel said. “Let’s just…”

“Get you some clothes,” Buffy finished. She looked at Angel in appeal, who nodded.

“Come on, Spike. Upstairs. We’ll get you out of that stuff and into some of my clothes.” Angel coughed, not wanting to mention what he could smell, but not wanting it to go untended, either. “Maybe a bath, first?”

Spike winced, and Angel knew he hadn’t been subtle. He bit his lip. “Come on,” he held out his hand.

“Maybe I should do that.” Buffy stepped in front of Angel.

Angel felt a tiny thrill of panic. It wasn’t that he was afraid of what Spike might say, about… well… yes, he was afraid of what Spike might say.

Spike let out a small chuckle, which was more normal and Spike-sounding than any sound he’d made since they saw him in the auction house. “S’okay, Liam. Let the slayer play rescuer for a bit. She’s better at it than you.” He gave Angel a saucy wink and took Buffy’s hand.

“It’s my house,” Angel muttered, a last, impotent appeal. Buffy was already leading Spike up the stairs.

Spike was terrified. A small voice in his head was wailing _don’t talk don’t stand what are you doing just do as you are told don’t move_.

Buffy, so warm and real next to him, caught his elbow as he stumbled on a step and asked, “Are you all right?”

“No, luv.” A small laugh escaped from him, like a sob. He shook his head. “No, ‘m not.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we declare bankruptcy. (Well, moral, anyway... okay, that was a few chapters back.)
> 
> *hands out smelling salts to all her patient readers fainting from the shock of an actual update*
> 
> We're into the "C" part of this H/C opus! Look for all the usual trappings: bathing, being tucked in...
> 
> Warnings: contains both Spuffy and Spangel! In rapid succession. Also, as usual, I have not beta'ed or even re-read what I wrote so watch for those typos!

Spike let Buffy bathe him. So long he’d spent learning not to trust reality before his eyes, now he couldn’t even react in time to object. It was like he was on a time delay from the world: she would stroke his arm, a moment would pass, and then he would realize that she had stroked his arm, and as he was deciding if he should do something about that, she had already moved on to soaping his hair.

Water got in his eyes but he was afraid to close them, lest the scene change.

Buffy ran her hands over him and stared at him as though reassuring herself of his reality. Then she caught something in his glance – he couldn’t be sure what, perhaps he was staring the same way – and looked away.

She stepped away from the bath and grabbed a towel. “Don’t… don’t read too much into this. I just… you’re a good fighter. We missed having you.”

A beat or two after a reply was expected, Buffy dropped her towel and fidgeted with the door knob.

“Missed having me?” Spike asked – it came out awkwardly and didn’t sound at all like the dirty remark he’d intended. Because he should make a lewd remark, he realized.

“As a fighter,” Buffy said. She paced, hands wringing nervously. “Look… I don’t know what’s going on with you, but what _was_ going on… with us… it… ugh! Why is this stuff always so hard to talk about? Killing things isn’t hard to talk about. Don’t you think it should be harder to say, ‘I wrenched the head off a giant, disgusting demon and got blood all over my shoes’ than ‘Let’s get our story straight on our messed-up relationship before my ex asks?’”

Buffy was talking too fast, her words sliding over him like the bubbles from the shampoo. He let his head fall back under the water. Enclosed, noise and smell all muted, almost gone. His eyes still open, he saw the showerhead ripple on the other side of the water surface. He was warm, clean, comfortable. He wanted to live in the moment of peace, though he knew it would be snatched away.

Being a slave was all about fear: constant, helpless fear, like a small tickle at the back of his throat.

Buffy’s small, too-strong hands were gripping his arms, pulling him up out of the water.

A rough towel attacked his head. “Are you listening to a word I’m saying?” Buffy asked.

“Yes,” Spike said, and held his breath against the word he wanted to follow it with. He gripped the sides of the tub and slowly got to his feet.

She handed him another towel and held his forearm, partially supporting his weight as he stepped out of the tub. He wobbled like a newborn calf, but soon had hold of the towel and was drying himself.

Buffy stepped back. “So?”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

She huffed. “What are you going to say, to Angel?”

He looked down. “Tell me what to say, and I’ll say it.”

“Come on, Spike. Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me... say it.”

He smiled a little, but kept his eyes on his legs as he wiped the towel over them. “Won’t say anything, Slayer. Nothing to say, is there?”

He could feel her relief, her exhaled breath, and then she stepped close to him again, hands touching, feeling, inspecting. “You aren’t hurt anywhere,” she said.

He shook his head.

She pressed against him, hands reaching up to frame his face. “I… I did miss you,” she said, and blushed. She looked so fetching with that color on her cheeks, more beautiful than any make-up could make her. Her lashes dropped and her fingers traced down his jaw to the base of his neck. “And I’m so glad to have you back in one piece. I was… when I saw you there.” She shook her head. Her grip tightened. “Don’t do that to me.”

Spike let his forehead fall against hers. “Never,” he said. “I’ll never leave you again. Promise.” He could smell her, feel her heat, and believe that these were her words.

If this was an illusion, the psychiatrist was getting crueler than ever.

***

Angel’s leg bounced. His fingers tapped the table, and no matter how he tried to pay attention to the ESPN hockey report, his eyes kept drifting over to the stairs, and his mind kept thinking ridiculous things that it simply should not.

He was NOT jealous. Jealous of what? Buffy hated Spike. He hated Spike. They’d just rescued him because… because they had to. It was a hero thing. Like not ripping the heads off annoying people even when you really, really wanted to.

So why did Angel want to rush up the stairs and snatch Spike away from Buffy’s tender hands because he was his… his SOMETHING, and whatever he was, he was Angel’s first?

Not to mention, he had gotten a little banged up in that rescue and shouldn’t Buffy be fussing over his injuries instead of tending to Spike, who had the gall to look so damn broken?

It was a trick. It had to be. He was just waiting for the right moment to spring his oh-so-clever one-liners on them and make Angel look stupid.

And, he finally admitted, with a nice dash of self-loathing, he was afraid Spike would say something to Buffy, and reveal Angel’s own less-than-heroic behavior.

He gave up on hockey and poured another three fingers of whiskey into his glass, which he swallowed without tasting.

It was too much. He ran up the steps. He didn’t have to look at the numbers on the doors to know which suite they were in. He didn’t break his stride until he opened the bathroom door…

Angel’s eyes popped wide and his mouth hung open. Spike was naked, pink and fresh from a hot bath, one hand loosely holding a towel that just covered his privates, while Buffy clung to him tightly, her lips working against his. For a moment, Angel wouldn’t have been able to answer if someone had asked what they were doing.

And then, childishly, he just shouted, “Hey!”

Buffy jumped back so quickly she pushed Spike. His head hit the wall hard on the way down, but he didn’t try to protect it, just fell hard to the floor, his towel now under his forearms, on the floor, and his head bowed over them, loose locks covering his face.

Buffy looked horror-struck, and reached to help Spike up, then drew her hands back to her chest and looked at Angel, then, shakily, got down on one knee and wrapped her hands around his bicep. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

Angel wasn’t sure she meant pushing Spike over. Angel cleared his throat. “Uh, Buffy, can we…?”

“Not a sodding invalid!” Spike scrambled to his feet, jerking out of Buffy’s grasp. He held the towel in front of him. His chest was rising and falling in quick gasps. He didn’t look up to see Angel and Buffy’s shocked stares.

Angel cleared his throat, “Buffy? Can we talk outside?”

Out in the hall, he turned to see Buffy’s Stern Face. He grimaced. “Buffy…”

“What I do is my business. And anyway it wasn’t what you think. That was a comfort… thing.”

Angel took a deep breath. “I didn’t call you out here to yell at you.”

“Oh,” Buffy said, and straightened a little. “Well. Good.”

“But I’m beginning to think I should. You just thought you’d kiss Spike? SPIKE? Now?”

“You know, we broke up. It was your idea. Are you going to beat up every guy I kiss? Like Riley?”

Angel ran his hands through his hair. He’d kiss Riley himself, if it was a question of Buffy dating the soldier or another vampire, but he had just enough sense not to say that out loud. “That’s not what this is about. Spike’s… confused. Disoriented by his experience, and he’s not going to take your little comforting gesture lightly.” Not that Angel thought it was a comforting gesture. There was far too much tongue action for that.

And sub-vocal moans of pleasure.

Behind the closed door, he heard Spike moving around.

Buffy seemed to think over what he said. She sighed. “Right. I… got carried away. A little. It won’t happen again.”

There was something disturbingly grim about the way she said that last sentence, but Angel really didn’t want to know more. “I think you should head home.”

Buffy frowned at him. “You’re kicking us out? After… after all that?”

“Us?” Angel squinted. “No. You. But not kicking…” he sighed. “Just go home, Buffy. Leave Spike to me. I’ll get him back to his old, annoying self in a couple days and, if the experience doesn’t make me stake him, send him back to Sunnydale.”

“Excuse me? I’m not leaving him with you. You hate Spike.”

“You hate Spike,” he added. And, under his breath, “at least you did until you started kissing him.”

“It was a thing.” Buffy waved her hand overhead. “Fine. _We_ will go.”

“Buffy, don’t be like that. He can stay. He needs time to recover. Time with his own kind.”

“He’s a vampire, not a poodle. He was only gone two months! Spike just needs to go back to his crypt and…”

The door to the suite jerked open. Angel and Buffy fell silent at the appearance of Spike, dressed in one of Angel’s over-large shirts. “Two months?” He stared at them incredulously.

“That’s one of my favorite shirts,” said Angel. “Could you have picked something from the second drawer?”

“Two months,” Spike repeated. “Did I just hear you say I was only gone two sodding months?”

“Did it feel longer?” Buffy asked.

Spike stepped back from the door frame, face blank, motions slow. “Yeah,” he said.

He sat down on an ottoman, his bare legs sticking out from under the tails of the burgundy shirt made him look young and fragile. “Felt like bloody years. Decades.”

Buffy crouched down, fingers reaching toward him, but not quite touching his hand. “What did they do to you?”

“Time often runs differently between dimensions,” Angel said. “Like… hell dimensions.” Saying the words was like prodding a cut with a sweat-salty fingertip.

Buffy sighed, sitting back on her haunches. “All right. I need a shower and some sleep, myself. Spike? Are you going to be all right here for the night?”

Spike stared at her like it was the oddest question anyone could ask. Slowly, he nodded.

“I’ll make sure he’s settled,” Angel said, trying to sound reassuring, but coming off irritated.

Buffy stayed until Spike drank a glass of pig’s blood – which Angel was sent to fetch like he was room service or something – and lay down in Angel’s big bed. Then she gave Angel a significant look that he was at a loss to interpret and slipped out the door. He followed the sound of her – footsteps and heartbeat and sighing breaths – as she made her way to the guest suite he’d given her. Soon there was the groan and shriek of the old water pipes being turned on again, and the white noise of the shower drowning her out.

Angel turned away from the closed door. Being around Buffy always left him feeling like an actor without a script.

Spike sat up against the pillows, one arm crooked overhead to hold the edge of the headboard. His hair was uncombed, ungelled, a mop of disordered curls, and the over-large sleeve, unbuttoned, hung loose from his elbow. His gaze as rapt as a mouse dropped into a serpent’s cage.

“Are you trying to get me to fuck you?” Angel asked, a little exasperated.

Spike dropped his gaze. That really didn’t help. Before he knew what he was about, Angel had the bedpost under his fist.

“Sorry just being here is such a turn-on,” Spike said, and it actually sounded like an apology.

“How’d they do it?” Angel stared hard at Spike’s lowered lashes, trying to will him to look up again. “How did they break you?”

Spike’s head lifted, just a small jerk, a suppressed laugh. “Was always broken, Liam. You know that.”

Spike’s shoulders were as cool and hard as the bedpost under his palms. Angel shook him, and his head rolled with the motion. The passivity fueled his rage. “You little shit! What do you think you’re doing?” Spike didn’t answer, and the look on his face was one of acceptance. Angel shook him harder. “What was that in the bathroom? How did you get her to kiss you?”

Spike’s head rolled back, his lips open, pink and moist, and then Angel’s lips were pressing into them, hard against soft, anger against yielding, and he couldn’t quite stop himself, or he didn’t want to. The kiss was part punishment, part fear – the unspoken fear he’d had that he wouldn’t even admit to himself, fear that Spike was gone and not to be gotten back, fear that he’d failed.

Angel felt his cock straining against the satin sheets, against the hard body beneath them, felt like he could break down walls and not notice, as his mouth filled with familiar taste, sensation. He tightened his grip and snarled into the open mouth below him. There was blood now, a too-thin trickle mixing with saliva on his fangs.

Spike made a noise, a mewl, a throat-strangled cry, and suddenly Angel came to his senses and realized he was choking him. He pulled back, loosening his grip but not letting go. Spike’s lips were swollen, almost bruised, with fine cuts from Angel’s fangs. Quieter, Angel asked, “Why do you do this to me?”

Spike licked his lips. “Sorry,” he croaked.

Angel let go of him entirely, moved to sit at the foot of the bed, silenced and immobilized by self-loathing. It was Angelus, that’s what it was, the demon inside of him, surging forward at any taste of helpless prey.

“Liam?” Angel turned to see Spike sitting up, disheveled and debauched, his shirt hanging open, torn.

Angel couldn’t bring himself to say anything, so he just nodded.

Spike asked, “Do you…. Do you love me?”

“No, Spike.” Angel took in a big lungful of air, and stood. “And don’t call me Liam.”

Spike nodded. This was the answer he expected. He started to say something more, but Angel hurried out of the room before he’d have to hear it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Herein be Spangel, and maybe a dash of schmoop with the overall, oppressive feeling of doom.
> 
> Enjoy! :)

Angel made himself an uncomfortable bed in one of the unused guest rooms. It was cold and dusty and mildewed, the mattress hard and the springs rusted. Just perfect for a night of guilt and penance.

It didn’t matter that it was Spike, that Spike had no soul. He should know better, have better control. Spike wasn’t some sort of low-guilt victim-substitute. Didn’t matter that the little shit deserved it. Deserved worse. He had no sense of remorse for his crimes, no empathy…

Angel bit his lower lip. And when had his hand slipped down to his cock? Drawing it back out to the top of the blanket felt like fighting an undertow.

He took in a deep breath, which was a mistake. He coughed on a lung full of dust and age. He rolled over and resolved not to breathe, just to sleep, and definitely not to think about annoying blonde vampires kneeling at auction, bound in golden chains. Soft, pliant, silent.

Angel groaned and rolled back.

***

Spike laid in the soft bed, the satin sheets redolent of Angel. His fingers kept reaching for his throat, for the metal collar that wasn’t there anymore. Buffy took it off. His fingertips ghosted over the healing indent in his skin. _Buffy took it off._

Even his fingertips couldn’t believe it. They stole quietly, up to his neck, then back down under the covers, not wanting to be caught fidgeting. He wanted to be still. Good. Ready. If he closed his eyes, the softness and the smell brought him right back to the little velvet pillow, and the golden chains, pulling him back to a large fist. It’s the dream he hates the most, and loves, and hates loving: so horridly comfortable it pulls you in to wanting it.

He didn’t close his eyes.

Slowly, he became aware of a sound – something so quiet it was on the edge of not being heard at all. He stopped breathing and concentrated. A furtive rustling. Something above the rats and small animals in the floorboards. He focused on it, on the place it would disappear and return. And then he heard a loud, hitched breath.

He knew he should stay where he was put. That was an easy rule. Just stay. Be still. But…

If this was real.

There was a sharp pain in his chest, a burning spark of hope that this was real, his ordeal at an end. This tiny part of him was quietly counting, comparing time elapsed to his own careful reckoning of the longest delusion he’d been subjected to. Assuming he didn’t fall asleep, he could be sure. He just couldn’t close his eyes.

There was another sound, a cough, and a groan.

If this wasn’t real; if this was a dream, they wouldn’t put in that sound unless he was supposed to hear it.

Spike was panting now, with confusion and a thousand unsure thoughts pulling in opposite directions. If it was real. If it wasn’t.

He slipped out of the bed. The door wasn’t locked – he somehow knew it wouldn’t be. He stood in the dark hallway, smelling old smells and new, the tenuous whiff of habitation in a place long disused. And Angel. Everywhere, Angel.

A squeak of rusted springs reminded him what he was looking for. The location was clear enough – the room just across the hall. He padded over to it, his bare feet making no sound at all. Off to the left, the corridor wall fell away into the dark cavern of the hotel lobby.

Spike waited at the door, his fingertips just resting on the cold wood. He smelled nothing but dust and mildew behind it. But then there were more sounds, increasing in volume and regularity. He opened the door.

On the bed, Angel froze. Spike approached slowly. Angel’s elbow was up, his body contorted in an unnatural position, and as Spike got closer he could smell the sharp tang of arousal, rising like smoke from the edge of the blanket. Angel’s forehead was sweaty, and his eyes were squeezed shut. He was trying to even out his breathing and pretend to be asleep.

Despite everything, Spike smirked.

After a beat, Angel seemed to realize acting like a caught-out teen was beneath him and his eyes snapped open, his limbs relaxing into a more natural pose. “What do you want, Spike?”

Spike wanted to turn and run from that steady gaze. He clenched his fists and stayed his ground, though he shook and turned his head away. “Heard a noise.”

Angel sighed – a heavy, judging sound.

Spike felt at war within himself, half his impulses toward staying, half toward fleeing, all anxious to know what was wanted of him. If this was real… if it wasn’t… and when had he become such a fucking ponce?

Spike took a step backward. “Sorry. I’ll go.”

Angel’s hand closed on Spike’s wrist, hard as a manacle and slightly sweaty, jerking him to a stop. Spike met Angel’s gaze with panic and Angel sighed again.

“What do you want from me, Spike?”

Spike started to tremble, much to his own disgust. “Nothing,” he said, and then quietly added, “let go of me, berk.”

Angel let go of him, and sat back, hands in his lap, looking just as frustrated and irate as a man interrupted mid-wank should. “Just tell me you’re going to be all right.”

The ponderous, wrinkled brow just got to Spike. He stopped shivering nervously and sat on the edge of the bed. “Yeah. In time, you know?” He leaned forward and kissed the old tosser’s brow.

The look of awed shock killed him. He closed his eyes and held still, trying to will away the overwhelming gratitude at being appreciated at all.

And then Angel’s hands were on him, and then Angel’s mouth, and that was all right. That was expected. Spike knew what to do with that.

He shifted closer, his shin sliding over Angel’s bulge, riding it gently as Angel lifted him up and then pushed him down. His hand rode down with the blanket, stroking muscled flesh. Angel’s thick cock jumped to meet his palm, already warmed by friction and hard and full. His lips slipped easily over the plumy head, sliding in clear pre-come, the musky taste as familiar as his own breath. As familiar as the hands gripping his head snuggly, forcing him down faster than he would like, past the playful beginning and straight in to opening his throat, stretching his jaws to take all of it, the shaft hard and swelling in the center – Angel was thickest about halfway down his cock, tapering a bit to the base, where Spike could seal his lips around it, almost, to feel the bushy hairs and the skin dragging back and forth. Best of all where the gasps and groans over him, the strong body fucking up into him, the hands gripping tight, ripping hairs. That let him know he was appreciated.

“Fuck… fuck.” Angel’s skull cracked against the headboard. His hips strained upward, lifting Spike with him. “No. Spike… fuck!” He pushed Spike back violently and was coming, his cock twisting as it slipped free, smearing cum over Spike’s lips and spraying over his cheek and nose.

Spike raised his head as Angel’s grip slackened. A glob of cum landed on his eyelash and he blinked, wanting to dislodge it but that was one of the rules – you didn’t wipe them off of you.

Angel’s eyes were closed. He breathed out, slowly, and opened them. “Jesus, Spike.” He stroked his large thumb over Spike’s right eye. He gratefully leaned into the touch as his lashes were cleared. Angel’s hand was comforting, cradling the side of his face. Spike turned into it and kissed the palm.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Angel said.

“Nah, was nice.” Spike rubbed his face in Angel’s palm, surreptitiously cleaning a little more spunk off of it. He licked the spend from the gentle whorls and wrinkles of Angel’s hand.

Angel gathered him up into a sudden, fierce hug, and he felt tears against his shoulder. “You’re broken, Spike. And I can’t fix you.”

When he could breathe again, as Angel’s grip relaxed, Spike nestled down so his head was on Angel’s shoulder. “Shush. You rescued me, didn’t you?”

He felt the big chest fill with air below him. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Liar. I tried and tried to get away. I fought, I connived, and each time I failed. Couldn’t do it on my own; It took you.”

He felt Angel smile. “Well, Buffy helped.”

Spike had gotten hard, through the rough blow job, and he shifted his weight so it wouldn’t press into Angel. It would go away on its own. He was full of lassitude now, eager to fall asleep, being held.

“I have to do better,” Angel said. “I have a soul. You don’t understand. It’s a responsibility to be better.”

Privately, Spike didn’t believe in souls. With or without, supposedly, Angel was still Angel. But he didn’t say this out loud, of course, he only snuggled down closer and asked, “You want to move back to the big bed?”

“God yes,” Angel said, and before Spike knew what was happening, he was being carried out of the door of the abandoned room.

He sodding hated being carried. Made him feel all damsel. But he held still for it, after a brief struggle, so brief he doubted Angel even noticed it.

Angel stopped at the doorway, peering down the corridor in both directions a long time before making the quick dash across. As the door to Angel’s own room closed behind them, he laughed and swung Spike up a little to kiss him. “Could you imagine Buffy catching us like this?”

Spike said nothing, because up until just then he couldn’t imagine Angel laughing about that, much less it happening. He held tight and let Angel set him on the bed and kiss him, long and slow and exploring.

Angel kept kissing him, as though he couldn’t bear to come up for air, as he climbed over him and onto the bed, at last breaking free to slip under the covers with a sigh.

Spike should have been content. He was safe, he was free.

_If it’s all real_ , a tiny voice couldn’t help but nag. Still, it didn’t feel like the psychiatrist’s MO. Where was the twisting knife in his guts to end it all?

Angel rolled over, with a puppyish noise, already halfway to sleep. His heavy arm fell across Spike’s waist and felt protective, accepting. And all it had cost him was one rather quick and sloppy blowjob.

Spike was wide awake. He brushed the stupid spikes back from Angel’s forehead and kissed the smooth brow. “Would you try to love me, if I loved you?”

If Angel heard, he pretended not to.


	13. Unlucky Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Spangel! More mixed feelings! yay!
> 
> I'm feeling rather self-loathing about my writing lately. I'm such a hack! Can't I maintain a balanced third person without getting all uneven? Gah!
> 
> Fortunately for you, dear readers, I don't quite care enough to actually edit. Or I'd never post. ;)
> 
> Here ya go!

Buffy walked back and forth behind the hotel check-in counter, twirling the phone cord in her fingers while Cordelia watched with a face that threatened retribution should anything happen to her professional equipment.

“I’m just asking if it’s totally kablooey or if you think it’s livable. For the un-alive. Yes, I know it’s dangerous walking through a Sunnydale cemetery, that’s why I said go during the day. Because we have to put him somewhere, Willow!”

Cordelia cleared her throat and raised her fashion magazine to cover her face. Buffy wondered what that was about for about a second before turning to see Spike standing at the counter, watching her.

He quickly looked down. “Angel said there was some blood down here.”

“Refrigerator,” Cordelia said, pointing one long finger over her magazine, which she kept protectively in front of her while she watched Spike with icy distrust.

“Thanks,” he said, though he stayed where he was.

On the phone, Willow’s tiny voice repeated, “Buffy? Buffy?””

Buffy shook her head. “Sorry, Willow. I’m here. So, can you do it? We’re going to try and be home around midnight.”

As though her voice freed everyone to act normal, Buffy saw Cordy set her magazine down and Spike slip around the counter, nodding cautiously to her.

Spike gave Cordy’s desk as big a berth as he could, crossing to the mini-fridge against the wall.

Buffy hung up and in a too-bright voice announced, “It’s almost lunchtime. I was thinking Cordy and I could go shopping a bit and be back in time for us to leave for Sunnydale at dusk? That way, Spike, you can handle the city driving. I know how you… like do to that.”

Her words faded, ridiculous and lame in the large, silent room.

Cordelia looked very confused, but then she blinked. “Uh, yeah. We could do that. There are some boutiques near here.”

“Can you afford it?” Spike set a plastic container on the counter and looked at her with concern.

“I said we’d go shopping, not buying,” Buffy replied, and Cordelia smiled brightly, a touch of relief relaxing her eyes.

“I could really use some time out in the sun,” Cordy said, with a pointed look at Spike.

Spike’s head was lowered, all his concentration on opening the little soup-take-out container that was, no doubt, not full of soup. Buffy could just make out the darkness inside. Spike was wearing a black button-down that bloused a bit out of the black pants he was wearing, which were just a bit big on him and sitting low on his hips. He had worn button-down shirts before – Buffy knew that because she’d torn them off of him – but somehow he just didn’t look like himself. Maybe it was his hair, all unruly and un-gelled. She normally only saw it like that when…

Spike glanced up, catching her staring.

“I’ll go make sure the car is packed,” she said.

She nearly ran into Angel as she hurried up the stairs to check the room she was staying in. There was an awkward standing, and then both trying to decide which way to go to get around each other, and going the same way, and then both going the other way.

Finally they both stepped to their personal left, and Buffy ran up the stairs.

Angel’s clothes were identical to those he’d given Spike to wear, a black silk button-down with a woven pattern and black slacks. Buffy stared, thought about saying something, than wisely thought better of that.

She wasn’t running away. She was making a strategic retreat while Angel still had his clueless face on.

Cordelia cleared her throat as Angel entered the lobby area, and cleared it a little louder when he started to walk past her to his office.

Angel made an awkward half-motion, unsure whether to continue on, go to Spike, or go to Cordelia. Finally, Cordelia’s beckoning won, though he stopped near to Spike to put his hand briefly on the other vampire’s arm. Spike didn’t acknowledge this. He was looking down at the container of blood in his hands with a studious frown.

Cordelia stood and waved at Angel to follow her to the back of the cozy office-nook. Once there she hissed in a stage whisper, “Spike was your big rescue? SPIKE? Do you know I have to wear makeup on my navel because of him?”

Angel winced and glanced back at Spike, who was still standing at the end of the counter, looking down at the container in his hands.

Trying to keep his voice as low as possible, Angel said, “He’s harmless.”

“He’s a rabid dog on a leash, and we don’t know how intact that leash is!”

“He can hear you, Cordy.”

“Good. Let him hear. At least then he’ll know someone hasn’t forgotten about him stringing you up and stabbing you with hot pokers!”

“Cordy, Spike and I… it’s more complicated than that.”

“Oh do not give me that broody look, mister. I am not happy about a soulless vampire staying here. When Buffy goes home, he goes, too. Or I do.”

Spike made a very quiet whimper, something only Angel could hear, and he spun around to look at him. He hadn’t moved, but there was a slight quiver in his shoulders.

Angel stopped himself just short of touching Spike’s arm. He clenched his fist and set it on the counter. “Spike? What is it?”

He shook his head. His elbows flexed a little, as though preparing to pick up the container of blood, but then he stopped. His shoulders slumped with defeat. “Can’t…” He threw his head back, eyes ceiling-ward. “So fucking stupid,” he said under his breath. “Angel? Can I have this?”

“Of course. Drink it.”

Spike tossed the blood back like a shot of bourbon and slammed the container back down, nearly crumbling it.

Cordelia huffed and grabbed her purse. “I’m waiting for Buffy outside. Call me when the vampire therapy session is over.”

Angel bit his lip, watching her long legs make their purposefully way across the lobby. As the door swung shut behind her, he relaxed a little, that possibility cut off, he could turn fully to Spike, put his hand on his arm. “You couldn’t eat it? Not without permission?”

Spike shook. “I knew you wouldn’t mind. I know… know this isn’t there. Sometimes, I could eat without asking. I mean, in some of the… the scenarios.” He closed his eyes. “I’m pathetic.”

“No. You’ve been through… well, a lot. When I got back from Hell, I couldn’t even talk for a month.”  
  
Spike’s heart broke a little, seeing the expression on Angel’s face, so earnestly trying to comfort him. He’d seen the same face first thing that morning.

Though he’d stayed awake as long as he could, he’d awoken first, sharply flung to consciousness out of a fitful dream of fear where he was trying to wake up and couldn’t. The first thing he was aware of was Angel’s body, pressing against his, particularly his cock, full and hard against his hip. So without thinking, really, Spike had turned and taken him in hand. It was only natural now – he was in bed with someone, that someone was turned on – time to get to work.

And then Angel’s hand had snatched his wrist, held him off, half-open eyes studying him.

“You don’t have to do this, Spike.”

“I want to,” he said, and at the moment, he really did. He was starting to shake a little from the fear that came with any disapproval.

Angel had shaken his head, brow all furrowed, but when Spike bared his throat and said, “Please?” Angel had pounced on him with ferocious gratitude.

Spike had made all the right noises, but it was heart-wrenching, somehow more false than ever because he actually felt pleasure, almost but not quite at the right moments and times… he was off-set from the experience, acting eager despite being eager.

Angel was sweaty and large and how could he ever have mistaken the false images for this? Despite falling asleep, Spike was letting himself open up to the idea that this was real. It felt so damn real. And Angel’s gasp and shudder, his collapse on top of him, was real as life.

Spike was still hard, and Angel raised himself on his elbows to look down at him. “Come on, touch yourself.”

Spike shook his head.

“Come on.” Angel drew his hand to his crotch. Spike started to fight, tense, fearful. His erection flagged.

The punishment for touching there was always the worst. He froze and begged with his eyes not to be forced into it. Angel just stared at him in confusion.

He’d heard about Angel’s soulful guilt, had made fun of it, but Spike had to admit he’d never actually seen it. It made him wonder if he really knew Angel at all. Angel, who was now gently rubbing the back of his hand with one thumb, standing close but not quite touching him otherwise, concerned, handling him like broken glass.

A door opened and closed upstairs. Angel flinched away from Spike.

Which made Spike relax, because it was more in keeping with what he expected.

Buffy came down the stairs, her suitcase banging against her thighs as she tried to carry it, a shoulder bag, and a purse.

Angel rushed up to help her, but she shrugged away from him. “I’ve got it.”

“Buffy, you don’t have to carry everything. Isn’t the weight of the world enough?”

She gave him a look worthy of that remark and continued down the stairs. “If you have to be all chivalrous, get the door.”

Spike felt like he’d been slapped, at the word “chivalrous”, he pulled himself out of his reverie, his stillness, and tried to hurry to get the door. He bumped into Angel, who gave him a strange look. He stepped back and let Angel get the door.

Even under the shade of the hotel portico, the sun glinted along the glass as it moved, and Buffy stepped out into a brighter world. Cordelia was waiting, leaning back against a sporty little car, eyes hidden behind large sunglasses. She raised her arm at Buffy’s approach and magically they were transformed from two warriors locked in a deadly struggle against evil itself to two old friends going out shopping. It was a lovely thing to see, and the lilt of their conversation, Cordy’s voice louder and Buffy’s speaking longer, drifted like music through the open door until it swung closed.

Angel turned to look at Spike and shrugged. After a moment, Spike wondered if he should shrug too. Angel took a step closer to him, frowning. You could practically see the rusty gears turning in his head, trying to come up with something to say.

Bless the socially inept berk. Spike put his hand on Angel’s cheek, which startled him. He smiled. “I’m fine. Hundred percent better.”

“You’re lying.”

“Well, yeah.”

Angel wanted nothing more than to crush the stupid, broken vampire against him, to kiss away this weird passivity, but they were too out in the open. He was aware of all the entrances and windows into the room, like eyes watching him. “Listen, Spike, about this morning…”

“It was lovely. Best shag all week.” Spike took a step into Angel’s space, and then saw the reaction, the stiffened shoulders, to his words. All week. The past was brought irrevocably into the conversation. He sagged.

Angel wrapped him up in his arms. “I should want to kill you.”

“Yeah. Rotten. Soulless. Evil.” Spike shrugged.

“Damn it, Spike.” Angel sounded furious, but didn’t let go, just rested his head against Spike’s. “I want you. I just had you and I want you again. And I know it’s wrong and maybe that’s why I want it.”

“It’s all right. I…”

“Don’t. Don’t say you’re fine with this. It’s exploitative. You’re only agreeing because those slavers fucked with your head. We’ll figure this out. We’d better, before I go nuts.”

“Helloooo! Hey, where is everyone?”

Angel let go of Spike and rushed to meet a small young woman who was carrying large paper bags.

“Fred! I don’t know, actually. Uh… Cordelia stepped out. I haven’t seen Wes or Gunn.”

Fred handed one of her bags to Angel and peered around him. “Gunn is parking the car. We got Taco Bueno. Is that your rescue guy? Hi, I’m Fred. It’s short for ‘Winifred’. People ask that a lot.”

She extended her hand and followed it across the room, to Spike, who took it with helpless civility. “Spike,” he said, and coughed, because it came out almost a squeak.

“Angel rescued me, too. He’s a real sweetie about that.”

The savory scent of salsa and grilled meat wafted from her paper sack, warm like her breath as she talked quickly.

“Can I have a taco, Winifred?” Spike smiled shyly at her.

“Of course you can, silly!”

The same door Fred came through slammed. “I don’t know about that.” The black man who entered held aloft a similar paper sack. “Hardly enough in here for Fred!”

“Oh you!” Fred said, throwing a fake slap toward him.

Angel held out his hands. “Guys. Keep it down, okay? Spike just got back from a hell dimension. We don’t know how long he was in there or what he experienced.”

Fred hooked her arm around Spike’s and dragged him toward the back of the room. “I was captive in a hell dimension once. I had a collar and everything.”

“Bet you were ravishing,” Spike said, with his customary leer.

Fred slapped him playfully. “I was not. I was all dirty and people called me a cow!”

Angel wanted to scream. Couldn’t they see it was an act? Spike was only doing what he thought they wanted, being friendly. “Wait. Just…”

Fred snatched the taco-bag she had let Angel hold and gave it to Spike to carry as they followed Gunn into the hotel ballroom, which was often used for communal meals. Angel particularly didn’t like it, cavernous and filled with muted opulence, but Fred and Gunn seemed to genuinely enjoy eating at a card table set up by itself under a great chandelier festooned with cobwebs.

He wanted to follow, but he was so excluded by Fred and Gunn's glances and smiles, by linked arms and innocent pleasure. He stared after the wide door as it swung shut behind them, carved in the high deco style, a fanciful series of steps dancing across wood and brass.

Left alone again, Angel tapped his fist against the counter and sighed. The door to the office opened with its usual sound, but it may as well have been a gun-shot. Wes stood there, looking at Angel with an expression that was walled off, and a stone wall at that.

Angel shifted to face him. “You were in the office all this time?”

Wes nodded shallowly.

“Did you…” Angel scratched the back of his head. “Hell. How much did you hear?”

Wesley said, “You’re sending him to Sunnydale.” It wasn’t a question.

Angel sighed, heavy and resigned. “Yeah,” he said, “I am.”

Wes nodded curtly and returned to the office, and whatever it was he was working on.

Slowly, Angel climbed the stairs back up to his suite, to take solace in some whiskey and tidy up the traces of last night.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! I actually have a sort of outline that may take me through three chapters. Maybe.
> 
> Anyway, here's an update! Yay!
> 
> Warning: Spuffy. Not-Ash-Safe.

Spike was feeling comfortable in the old hotel, and Angel’s friends treated him like he was almost human. Especially Fred. She seemed to know all about treading close to the sanity line, and her quick eyes and voice slipped in like a parrying blade every time the conversations got near uncomfortable topics. He supposed he could very much like living here.

But of course, when the sun set, Buffy was waiting with keys in the lobby, and he was supposed to go. Angel made no protest. “Behave yourself,” was all he said in farewell.

Spike wondered how he could still get his hopes up that someone cared for him. He followed Buffy out the door chastising himself.

They paused outside the car. Buffy had handed him the keys, and he shifted them from hand to hand, looking at the driver’s side door to Joyce’s old SUV with some trepidation.

“You… remember how to drive, right?”

He gave her a disgusted look and jerked the door open, slipping the key in the ignition before his butt touched the seat.

Buffy knew Spike was just acting like Spike – pretending. It reminded her of herself, soon after resurrection, going through the motions. If it weren’t for that memory, she wouldn’t have trusted him to drive. A part of her still didn’t trust him – saw his fragility and feared unexpected, wild behavior. But she knew what he was going through. At least she hoped she did.

Spike saw her stare and try to hide it, all the way back to Sunnydale. He bit the inside of his cheek and concentrated on driving very, very well, though he wanted to shout “I can do this!”

Some of the irritation must have shown on his face, because she turned away every time he glanced at her.

It was a long, silent drive.

When they pulled up to the house on Revello drive, every light was on, and Xander and Dawn were on the front porch, leaning on the front railing, a posture of long waiting.

“Oh goody,” Buffy muttered. “It’s the recrimination committee.”

Spike turned off the car. “They don’t know that…”

“No, they don’t,” Buffy said, and jumped out of the car with a heavy sigh.

When Spike walked around the front of the car, Dawn ran down the front steps and give him a hug.

He stumbled from the impact, and after a startled moment, wrapped his arm around her. “Were you worried for me, Niblet?”

She stepped back to give him a playful slap. “Don’t you ever get captured again!”

“Yeah, first the initiative, than Glory – you’ve made a bad habit of it,” Xander joked, no humor in his voice.

First Drusilla, Spike thought, then the Immortal. Then the Italian tax collectors. Then the Nazis. Quite a habit. He decided not to correct him. “I’m shocked you’re at my welcome home party, Harris. Nothing on cable?”

“This isn’t a welcome-home party. It’s a ‘wow, I can’t believe Buffy went to all this effort for Fangless’ party. Being here is sort of like staring at a car-wreck, you know it’s nothing you want to see, but curiosity always wins.”

Buffy glared at Xander. He just shrugged. “Hey, come on. It’s _Spike_ , and you can’t afford to run off like that.” Here a hint of angry relief entered his voice – the sound of worry dissipating.

“Don’t listen to him,” Dawn said, curling against his chest, a warm limpet of comfort.

But Spike looked right over her head at Buffy, eyebrows canted with concern. “You didn’t miss work on my account, did you?”

“I arranged some days off in a row,” she said. She turned and walked up the stairs, sagging against the railing as though it was the only thing keeping her awake. “Is Willow back yet?”

“I can’t believe you’re cutting your hours for this freak,” Xander whispered, not quiet enough for any of them to miss.

The screen door creaked as Willow came out. She and Buffy walked to each other across the small porch, embracing briefly. “I made cookies,” Willow said.

“Did you find a place for Spike to sleep?”

Dawn drew Spike up the steps, and, pointedly looking past Willow, said, “He can stay in Mom’s room.”

“Dawn!”

Willow put a placating hand on Buffy’s arm. “It’s okay. Anyway, I did do like you asked. I don’t really know what ‘livable’ means for a vampire, but we have some options.”

The entry-way was painfully familiar, unchanged from his memory. It all felt like a delusion. Too much time had passed. Surely that old spring jacket couldn’t still be hanging on the last peg toward the stairs?

“You don’t have to keep me,” he said, looking straight at Buffy.

“Hey, look – here’s me agreeing with captain peroxide.” Xander held up a hand. “You rescued him, Buffy, and we’re all happy to have him back. Well, have his muscles, er… that’s not coming out right. Point is, that’s enough vampire philanthropy, don’t you think?”

“We can afford it. Just… come on, everyone inside. Willow, show me your ‘options’.”

Xander knocked Spike’s shoulder in passing. Dawn pulled his arm, drawing him further into the livingroom and talking rapidly in his defense. Buffy and Willow were discussing where to put him, and Buffy kept glancing his way, looking guilty. Where had that come from?

“Stop,” he said. “Please. Just… thanks for the rescue, Slayer. I’ll be on my way.”

“Wait!” She grabbed his sleeve. Silky fabric slid and tugged. Everyone was staring – at least that’s how it felt to the two principal players as Spike and Buffy stood in the entryway. She looked down. “Your crypt… it’s… kind of…”

“Blown up,” Willow provided.

“Oh,” Spike said, brows raised in surprise. “Well.” He shrugged and continued walking.

“Spike!” Buffy followed him onto the porch. Her eyes were pleading, but she couldn’t say more than his name.

“Don’t want to be a burden to you,” Spike said, simply. “I’ll check out my old crypt, yeah? Found it on my own, didn’t I?”

He wanted to kiss her, assure her, but the others were watching. He hadn’t forgotten how it was, though it felt muted, not as painful as it had been.

He was a little scared, walking out into the bright, suburban night, under the moon and stars and street lamps. He jumped at shadows and motion. He hated it. Hated the weakness that made him scan every crevice and corner for hidden assailants, crossing Sunnydale like a robber in a bank.

But there was no question he had to do this – turn his back on the squabbling voices and cross the dark alone – if he was every going to return to normal.

The wrought iron gate on the cemetery groaned as he vaulted it, and he froze in place where he hit the grass, crouched to fight. Nothing came, no noise but the murmur of heavily-laden branches in the breeze. He shook himself. Christ, would he ever return to normal?

The longest delusion he’d been subjected to lasted only twenty-four hours. (Yeah, but he’d fallen asleep twice now, hadn’t he? No, don’t think about it.)

He smelled carbon, singed fabric and hair, long before he got to the crypt. The smell of an old fire. He’d smelled that many times in the past.

The door to the crypt was hanging ajar – a big old metal security door, meant to be opened only when a new dearly departed joined the family dead. It had a pretty bad dent in it, from being wrenched open by him, time and again – it stuck often.

He crept around the building, peering cautiously into the dust-covered windows, there were just two of them, and the interior was too dark to make anything out, even with a vampire’s vision.

It was anti-climatic, when he finally got up the courage to walk in, throwing the door wide, first, stepping aside quickly, and then waiting, as the silence rang around him, he entered the dim space inside.

The television had fallen over, picture tube shattered. The smell of old smoke and decay pervaded. Sooty footprints dragging charred lines led from the lower-level to the door.

He found some candles, damp with dew and scratched from their fall, but otherwise unharmed. Ironic how hard it was to find something to light them with, in the aftermath of fire, but then he found his duster, in a crumpled pile behind the sarcophagus he sometimes lounged on. His lighter was still in the pocket.

The downstairs was disappointing. He expected more damage, somehow. A trickle of water ran across the former bedroom, probably some busted pipe. In the north side of the room was a large, decaying pile of something that had once been alive and was now just odiferous.

The bed was mussed, pushed off to the side, and the baseboard charred. He sat on it, and jumped up again at the wave of odor the abused mattress expelled like a sigh.

Right. Unlivable.

He picked through the blankets, sniffing them until he found the least stinky, and brought it back up to the top level.

He settled down on the sarcophagus, noticed the door was still ajar, and told himself to stop being a girl. He balled up the blanket for a pillow and draped his duster over himself, wriggling until he was comfy. He closed his eyes.

For four seconds. Then he got up, pulled the door shut, barricaded it with some broken boards that had been his dresser, checked the two little windows to make sure the iron bars were in place, even though they were hardly big enough for anyone to enter through, and then lit all the candles he could find.

He wasn’t afraid. He was just humoring his inner, terrified child, or the bastard would never let him sleep.

***

He awoke with a sob, flailing, and fell off the sarcophagus. On the gritty floor he rubbed his eyes, slowly realizing where he was, the tendrils of half-remembered dream fading.

Sunlight slanted in golden bars of dust motes through the high window opposite him – the western window. It was afternoon, then.

He was still there, in Sunnydale. It had only been a dream. He was…

Looking at his hands. He was filthy. He looked at the opening to the lower entrance, and sighed heavily.

***

Buffy trudged home after her 9-hour shift at the Doublemeat. Oh, how she had missed THAT on her little jaunt to LA. Her feet were throbbing, her knees were sore, her skin stunk of fake-o-meat and fry oil, and home felt farther away every time.

She paused under a nice, shady tree, and realized she was in Restfield Cemetery. She looked down at her feet. Evil, vampire-seeking feet!

Well, she couldn’t deny that she’d been worried about Spike, wondering what he was doing all night and day. But she should go home and change first!

The evil feet didn’t listen.

She bit her lip and pulled on the door. It was stuck. She grunted and tugged harder, finally sticking a foot on the masonry to brace while she wrenched it free with a squeal. Stupid door. This wouldn’t happen if it withstood being kicked open better. “Spike?”

He was standing in the exact center of the room, facing the door, fists raised.

She approached cautiously. “Am I not welcome?”

Slowly, he relaxed his stance. He was wearing his own clothes – black t-shirt and jeans. His hair was slicked back and he looked shiny, new, clean. “Of course you are. I was just…” he ran a hand through his hair and seemed to re-set his whole stance. He approached her, smiling slyly, hands reaching for her waist.

She took a quick step back. It was way too much like Spike-from-two-months-ago. She didn’t trust it.

But then his hands were on her waist and his lips were on hers and…

Stupid lips!

His lips were colder than usual, and tasted of rainwater. She pulled back, put a hand over those lips lest her own seek them out before she could speak. “Tell me you aren’t doing this because… I don’t know. Tell me…”

He kissed her palm and drew her hand away. “Don’t worry about me, love. Missed you. Missed you so bloody much.”

And then her stupid legs were in on it with the stupid lips, oh, and her stupid hands – wrapping around his hard body as he pressed her into the wall, mouth devouring, every trace of friction not nearly enough.

Need she had though cooled off flared new, like gasoline thrown on a bed of embers. She was on fire, and Spike was wearing far too many clothes! She ground against the pleasant roughness of his jeans, so easily felt through the flimsy fabric of her panties, and came up for air just long enough to pull his t-shirt off over his head.

Think guilty thoughts later. Spike lips now.

They made love with desperate cries, animalistic sounds of near-pain, fighting against climax, for climax… just fighting. Skinned knees on stone floors felt almost good. Nothing mattered except getting him into her, as far as possible, and keeping him there.

But of course, they had to come down, eventually, all highs must end and the crushing reality descend. Buffy was on the floor of the crypt, the wholly insufficient scrap of a t-shirt her only covering against the coming dark. She shifted, feeling grubby and covered in sore spots and sweat.

Spike scuttled off and returned with his duster, which she gratefully rolled up in, smelling that nice leather smell.

She leaned against his chest, looking down over his scratched and scraped legs. There was a long scratch that puckered with blood. Did she do that? Oops.

“You cleaned,” she said, absently, noticing the floor was free of dust and debris. Probably for the first time ever.

“Swept up a bit,” he acknowledged. His arm was behind her, holding her away from the uncomfortable stone wall. His fingers strayed over her shoulder.

Buffy remembered that she had misgivings. Not the old ones, new ones. She shouldn’t be doing this – not because it wasn’t right for her, because it wasn’t right for him. “Spike?”

“Shh.” He kissed the top of her head. “You need to get home to the niblet, don’t you?”

She shifted up onto her knees, and saw the fragility in his smile, his clear blue eyes. How could someone so old look so naïve?

She nodded, and let him help her find her clothes.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter! It's kind of slow at this point in the story, I think. Spike continues to find his way back to himself. Though not without the occasional mis-step.
> 
> Warning: Prostitution, angst, and wedding planning

Spike was getting used to life, again. So much time had passed, now, that it was only in moments of forgetfulness, like upon first waking, that he thought he was still a prisoner.

Yet he did feel like an actor, a pretender in his own life. He filled the hours with cleaning and repairing the crypt. He pretended not to panic every time he got dirty or injured. (It wasn’t allowed. Can’t break someone else’s things.)

He gritted his teeth and pretended he was over it. If he was a little more careful, well, at least that wasn’t a bad thing.

Darkness fell and he stood a long time, looking out at the night from the safe, candlelit interior. He should go patrol, he thought. That’s what he would have done, before this. He would have gone out looking for trouble, and maybe scored some entertainment from cards or drink.

Instead he made a small, careful list of all the things he needed that could only be gotten now the sun was down. Then he mapped out his route, to take the least amount of time.

Though he forced himself to walk at a normal, if quick, pace to the convenient store and to the restroom by the public pool – where he filled a bucket with clean water for washing – he ran the last hundred feet back to the crypt.

Every shadow held danger. A thousand small motions in the periphery of his vision could have been something sneaking up on him.

Half the water sloshed out of his bucket in his panic. In anger at himself, he kicked it over.

So the floor was washed, and the dusty water dripped down into the charred lower room, which couldn’t have hurt it. No doubt it would join the muddy trickle on the floor. Some day he’d have to find that pipe and fix it, or live with moss and mildew. He poked around the earth-and-concrete wall for a bit with a candle. He stuck a charred bit of wood in the mud where he thought the moisture originated and wrote “pipe fixing stuff” on his shopping list.

Work made him feel a little more sane. He took the bucket and some rags back to the public restroom by the public pool on Wilson Avenue. He showered and rung the rags all out, scrubbing them and himself down with the awful pink soap in the hand-dispensers. Then he re-filled his bucket and walked home purposefully, slowly, counting his steps.

He was a little surprised to make it back in one piece.

Exhausted, he settled down on the mattress he’d made from folded blankets on the sarcophagus. Then, staring at the ceiling, he realized he’d neglected to get any blood. Sunrise was painting stripes of tangerine on the iron bars. He ruefully realized that part of him still expected to be fed, like some sort of pet. Or slave.

He tossed and turned, and woke up more than once panicked, from vague, forgotten dreams, or just unsure he would find the same room when he opened his eyes. Each time he touched the side of the sarcophagus beneath him, felt the soothing solidity of the concrete.

He was up before noon, and wandered around the crypt, unsure what to do. He was running out of mindless tasks, and his hunger was starting to feel like a knife in the gut. Somehow, hunger and cleanliness seemed to go together – like he was cleaning himself out as he cleaned out the crypt.

He sensed Buffy’s approach before he realized it, in the bright afternoon. By the time he smelled her, he was already tidying the bed, trying to make the room presentable for her.

Ponce. He sat on the corner of the coffin-box and waited for her to appear. He’d already opened the door to help air the place out – the must and smoke smell still lingered.

She stopped outside, in the safety of the sunlight. She twisted her hands together. “I just came by to see… if you’d like to move into my place. Willow and Dawn… I mean, we could use another adult around. And we set up a cot…”

He pretended to be unmoved, and then pretended, for her sake, to enjoy his independence. “Neither me nor the bit need a live-in babysitter, slayer. Leave well enough alone. Got the place almost cozy again.” He gestured at the collection of candle-holders on the other sarcophagus, neatly arranged and full of fresh candles.

“If it’s money you’re worried about, don’t,” Buffy said, and started to take a step forward, into the gloom. She stopped short. “It won’t cost me anything to have you there. If anything it will save… stuff. Time.”

“More convenient for you?” Spike tried to leer playfully.

She saw his pretending, and it made her angry. “No! Just… look, come to me when you’re ready, okay? Ready to really talk.”

He ducked his head, close to the line of sunlight. “’M always ready for you, love. You know that.”

“Just stop it.”

“Come on. You have time, don’t you?”

She took a full step back, up the slope of grass that lead down to the crypt. Her voice was pleading, “Spike, you know we can’t.”

“Can’t what? We’re both consenting adults.” He reached into the sun. She jogged away, stopping only at the last moment to glance back, before continuing.

What had gotten into her?

At dusk, he pulled on the duster and headed straight for Revello drive. The lights were on inside the house, and someone’s shadow crossed the dining room as he watched, afraid, somehow, to go up to the door.

He knew he’d agree to stay, if asked, inside those walls. He wasn’t ready for that. He turned on his heel and headed toward the late-night grocery on Third that carried cartons of pigs’ blood in the back of the beer cooler.

He walked down the road behind Sunnydale’s little downtown, between the back parking-lots and the nicer warehouses, converted now into various businesses, like the carpentry shop and the Bronze. He felt safe enough, there, though he didn’t know why. He’d been walking between warehouses when the ex-initiative bastards had bagged him. But it was well-lit along the road, and there was no place to hide from sight down its abandoned length.

A car rolled to a stop behind him, crunching gravel and debris under its tires.

“Need a ride?”

The bloke was human, middle-aged but dressed younger, and as Spike opened his mouth to ask him if he was out of his bloody mind, stopping to pick up vampires in Sunnydale, he caught a whiff of nervous arousal.

He was hoping to get lucky, picking up the rough-looking bloke on a deserted stretch of road.

Before he knew quite what he was doing, Spike folded his arms on the edge of the driver’s window and purred, “Do you give free rides, then? Because I don’t.”

Arousal, fear, and heart rate all spiked, filling the car with a delicious, human musk. If Spike’s heart could beat, it would be racing, too. He felt almost as nervous as the human fumbling for his wallet.

He slipped into the passenger seat wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before – it was a logical way to make money. Illegal, sure, but in that sort of nancy, no-victim way, like stealing from Wal-Mart. Surely the slayer wouldn’t object. He could earn money for his blood and help her out.

He closed his hand around shaking fingers, slipping the money free before the bloke could finish counting it. “That looks like just enough,” he said, tucking the bills into his back jean pocket.

“Y-your hands are ice cold.”

“Let’s see if you can warm me up, yeah? Where do you want to do this?”

The john kept glancing over at Spike, as though surprised he was really still sitting there, while he did a sloppy job of driving to the motel by the freeway. It was a good thing Sunnydale didn’t have much of a night-life, or they would have hit someone the third time he ran a stop sign. Spike slipped his hand into the other man’s lap, feeling the shape of his cock. The man emitted a high-pitched gasp and slammed the gas pedal down.

The night-clerk at the Siesta Inn probably thought the bloke was having a heart attack as he raced through paying for the room and then dropped the key twice trying to open it. Spike walked calmly up behind him, took the key and opened the door for him.

After that, it was pretty quick. Fumbling and rushed. Spike was shoved over the nearest item of furniture and his jeans were shoved down. The guy tried to go right into him without any lube or prep and hissed in frustration as his cock-head stuck to flesh and refused to go in. Spike made a show of sucking his fingers and used the spit to ease the way. The john wasn’t well-hung, but it still burned as he shoved impatiently in. He huffed and groaned, hands gripping the hard formica table on either side of Spike’s hips. He jerked and swore, and came on the fifth thrust, before Spike was even adjusted to the feeling.

“Fuck!” The man wheezed, full weight pressing Spike uncomfortably into the little table, which, Spike suspected, couldn’t really support both of their weight, so he tried to hold himself a little off of it.

“Give me… give me a few minutes,” the john said.

“If you want,” Spike said, and bit his lip, glad he was looking at the stupid pattern of rounded pink chevrons and not the bloke’s face.

This time, for the first time, he was there by choice. The realization was sickening.

“No. We’ll go again.” The guy lifted himself up with a groan and waddled into the bathroom, his pants still undone and sagging, exposing a bottom that had never seen the light of the sun. “Paid for the whole damn hour,” he muttered before closing the bathroom door.

Spike half expected some beloved figure from his past – his mother, perhaps – to appear and give commentary. Of course it didn’t happen. This was reality. He sat on the bed and slipped off his docs and jeans.

***

Buffy left the Doublemeat Palace to find Spike waiting for her, as he had many times before, just outside of the pool of light cast by the bare bulb over the employee’s exit. His hands were in the pockets of his duster, and he was looking down, the light gleaming off his bright hair.

But he shifted nervously when she approached, which was new. “Thought I’d walk you home,” he said, not looking at her.

Buffy felt a surge of relief. Maybe he understood what she’d tried to say earlier, understood it without needing to hear the words. She felt a little guilty, but relieved – off the hook. “Thanks.”

They fell into step, a step apart from each other.

“Here.” He held something out toward her.

She looked, and stopped in her tracks. “Spike. I don’t need your money.”

He looked pointedly behind them at the fast food joint. “Yes you do.”

“Where did you get that?” She nudged her chin toward the folded twenties.

“Didn’t steal it.”

“I didn’t ask you if you stole it. I want to know where you got it.”

Spike swallowed, looked down in a distinctly guilty way, and muttered, “Fine. Never mind.” He tucked the money back into his pocket.

Buffy let out a long breath. Being virtuous should leave you feeling happy, proud, not sad. (God, she really could have used that money!)

The Doublemeat Palace stood on the access road near the freeway, no doubt so its sign could be seen by commuters driving by. The walk home wasn’t terrible: across the parking lot, cut through Grand View Cemetery, cross Main, and there you were at the head of Revello Drive.

Buffy vaulted the cemetery fence first. Spike landed next to her just as she straightened her legs from the impact. He put his arm around her waist. “Nice and private here,” he whispered.

She shrugged him off. “No,” she said, and picked up the pace through the tombstones, one hand, as always, on the stake in her purse.

“Come on, love, get you off your feet for a while.”

“Yesterday was a mistake, Spike. It’s not going to happen again.”

They walked in silence a while.

When they turned onto Revello, Spike asked, quietly, “Do you not want me anymore?”

“Oh, if only.”

“You want me; I want you. Where’s the harm in a little fun?”

Buffy sighed heavily. Oh so very not off the hook. And he looked damned delectable, pouting, walking backward in front of her.

“Believe it or not, the harm is to you, Spike. I don’t expect you to see it. You’re only… what you are.”

She didn’t like the look of sad resignation on his face, so she hurried past him to the welcoming glow of her own front porch. “Come inside, Spike,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t refuse a direct invitation.

“Thank the gods you’re here,” Anya said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “It’s only a week to the wedding and we have barely any RSVP cards!”

Cards and confetti were strewn across the living room, along with piles of cut tulle and green ribbons – centerpieces and bundles of miniature blowing bubbles. Dawn, seated under a mountain of lace, pleaded with her eyes to be rescued.

Buffy reached behind herself for Spike’s hand. “Do you want to stay and help out?”

He winced at a high-pitched squeal and shook his head. “Ta. Think I’ll just stretch my legs a bit.”

“I’ll go with Spike,” Dawn said, jumping off the couch.

Buffy caught her by the upper arm. “Uh-uh. You have to suffer through this, junior bridesmaid.”

Spike slipped out the door and walked around to the back of the house, peering in the windows. Sure enough, Willow was in the kitchen alone, with a cup of tea and a pained expression.

He knocked lightly on the doorframe as he entered. Willow stood. “Oh! Sp…”

He held a fingertip to his lips. “Just popping in for a quick favor. Don’t rouse the nuptial brigade.”

Willow sat down again with an aggrieved sigh, looking in the direction of the living-room, where Anya was continuing to dictate proper bow-tying technique. “I’ve heard stories of Bride-zilla, but I think being a former demon makes it worse.”

“Listen, Red. You pay Buffy rent, yeah?”

“Uh… yeah. Not much, though. We worked it out with my parents. They weren’t willing to pay more than the dorm fee.”

Spike slid his small wad of bills across the table toward her. “Tell her your folks coughed up a little extra.”

Willow’s eyes got big. She picked up the money and flipped through it. She stopped counting after the fourth bill. “This is a lot… where did you get this?”

“I didn’t steal it. And Buffy won’t take money from me. So, will you give it to her? Make up whatever story you like.”

Willow frowned, and Spike bit his lip, expecting another moral lecture. But she pocketed the money and nodded.

Relieved, he turned to the door.

“Spike?”

Willow put her hand over the doorknob. “You could pay rent here, yourself, you know.”

“Not ready for that. Don’t… I don’t belong here, yeah?”

“Sometimes I feel that way, too.”

He chuckled. “I doubt it’s the same. But thanks, Red. You’re a real peach.”

And he ducked past her and out into the night, leaving her standing alone in the kitchen, wearing a worried expression.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last! Another chapter! I know, I am inconsistent and cruel.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to my darling Ash, who oh-so-subtly hinted at something she would like to see in the story. And also to Blondie, whose having a birthday and I know wouldn't mind a little something... Needless to say...
> 
> Spike/Lindsey
> 
> Strong language advisory. Prostitution. Unpleasant canon events.
> 
> Enjoy!

Dawn stomped down the sidewalk with the sort of prolonged anger only the young can sustain, striking one heel after another, so that the box of ribbon-wrapped bubble-blowing bottles shook and tinkled. “You read books about people breaking up on their wedding day. Or on sit-coms, it always _almost_ happens. And usually it’s because the awesome ex shows up or something. This doesn’t happen in real life. Only in OUR stupid life.”

“Should I try to bite him?” Spike asked, hefting his own box of wedding decorations.

“You can’t.”

“No, but I could try.”

Dawn muttered, “I wish you could bite him.”

“He’s not evil, bit. He’s just twenty.”

They were walking back to Revello drive because Buffy and Willow hadn’t had room in the SUV after packing up all the decorations they could fit. Anya was still at the hall, arguing with the catering manager, trying to get a refund for her grief. Spike knew he should feel sorry for her, but mostly he was profoundly blank on the situation. Buffy had given him a rib-crushing hug when he offered to walk Dawn home early, so that was nice. Also, earlier, she had rested her head on his shoulder and was just still, for a moment, when it became clear that the wedding had fallen apart like so many paper doilies in the rain, but it was not yet clear what could be done. A lot of people were still at that time, except for Mr. Harris, who was taking off his belt and threatening to “make that boy get married”.

Spike heard a car coming up behind them and assumed by its size and sound it was the SUV, coming back for them or a second load of decorations. Buffy might have news already on where Xander had gone. He turned to wave and was shocked to see a red-orange truck slowing down.

It was a truck that had passed him twice that week, once on Sunday and again on Thursday. Both times he’d been on the road by the warehouses, both times he hadn’t been alone. Spike was certain the man behind the wheel could have only one thing in mind. He looked pleadingly up at him, silently begging him to just drive on. Not to stop, not to say anything. Not with Dawn right there.

But the truck was matching their speed now, and the driver cranking down the window. “Hey there, buddy, can you talk for a minute?”

“I don’t talk to strangers,” Dawn said, haughtily.

The man in the truck smiled. “I meant your boyfriend there, miss.”

Dawn’s response was a typical, “Oh my god!” that showed her public objection and not-so-secret pleasure at someone thinking Spike was her boyfriend.

Spike said, “Walking a lady home, presently.”

“I can wait. You know where to meet me.”

And the truck sped up, passing them casually and turning down Main.

“Who the heck was that? One of your poker buddies?”

“I’ve no idea who he is,” Spike answered, honestly.

Dawn stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “He sure seemed to know who you are.”

“Yeah.”

Dawn stared him down, clearly not willing to drop this, or even continue their journey home. Spike sighed. “I’ve been selling… stuff.”

“Like, what, fencing stolen goods?”

“Something like, yeah. Saw him drive by the other night. Probably wants to do business.”

“Illegal business?”

Spike exhaled loudly. “Well, yeah.”

“I’m just asking,” Dawn said. “No reason to get all offended. Geez.” She started walking home again, her box held higher.

He smiled indulgently at her back. “That’s my good girl.”

“Someone around here has to be normal,” she replied.

They were both relieved to see the familiar front door before them, as though they’d escaped a long, slow chase.

***

The red-orange truck was parked along the access road, and its driver stood, leaning against the loading dock of a warehouse, under a sodium-lamp safety light. The top of his face was voided by the wide brim of a cowboy hat. One foot was propped up against the concrete wall, leaving the thigh straining tight in well-lit denim.

Spike stopped a polite distance away. The man hadn’t heard him walking up. “I’m confused, mate. Weren’t you the john?”

The man kicked off the wall without a visible sign of alarm, though Spike heard his heart jump briefly. “Got tired of waiting in the truck,” he said. “My legs cramp up.”

“Came as soon as I could.” Spike shrugged and sauntered closer, dropping his chin and his voice. “I imagine you’d like to do the same.”

“Would you believe I only wanted to ask you some questions?”

That might have been so, but he didn’t back away as Spike stepped between his legs and nudged his crotch. “So ask them,” Spike said. “’S your dime.”

“Fuck,” was the response, as Spike nuzzled along a slightly stubbly jawbone and kissed the fluttering pulse. The man tilted his head back and swallowed. “I know you can kill me,” he said.

Spike’s lips froze mid-nip. He was glad, given his surprise, that his face was hidden from view. “You know that, do you?”

“Yeah. I know who you are. What you are, Spike.”

It was Spike who stepped back. “You have me at a disadvantage, then, because I don’t know you from Adam.”

The man’s eyes were glazed with lust, but he cleared his throat and stuck out a hand. “Lindsey. We, uh, have a mutual acquaintance.”

“Who? The bloody tooth fairy?” Spike’s heart raced, fearing the answer would be a red demon with a penchant for torture and whole-milk lattes.

But the bloke – Lindsey – didn’t seem to know about the chip. Spike clenched his fists and wondered how long he could make that last.

“Angel,” Lindsey said, eyes suddenly cold. He tossed the name out like a dagger, a sure sign he did indeed know him.

Spike let the name hang in the air a bit. “Did my dear old grand-sire send you to check up on me?”

Lindsey smiled like it was the best joke he’d heard in a while. “Not really.”

“Then what is it you want?”

Lindsey looked away, off into the middle distance, though his mouth was still quirked with a grin. “I wanted to know why a notorious vampire is turning tricks for cheap in suburban California.”

“I…” Spike snapped his mouth shut. “Cheap?”

Lindsey tipped his head back, the shadow over his face retreating to just darken his eyes. “Why did Angel rescue you? What are you to him? Is he making you do this?”

Spike blinked, and a weight seemed to fall from him. “You’re one of Angel’s little nemeses!”

Lindsey scowled. “Just answer the fucking question. Any question. Take your pick.”

Spike studied him, this stranger with his intent eyes and practiced calm. “No,” he said. “Angel didn’t put me up to this. I need the money, plain and simple. If you think I’m not charging enough, I’ll be happy to charge you more. But I’m not answering any more questions. Not for free.”

Lindsey nodded curtly and headed toward his truck.

Spike frowned. “Aren’t you even going to think about it?”

“If I’m paying,” Lindsey responded, turning back on one heel, “I’d rather have the conversation somewhere more comfortable. Come on.”

As always, Spike found himself hesitating, just a moment, as he opened the passenger door. Lindsey already had his hand out, a couple folded twenties pointing at him. He stepped up into the old pick-up. The cab had the clean dry smell only age imparts to cars.

Lindsey waved the money. “Forty bucks just to talk for ten minute’s drive. Probably the best offer you’ll get all week.”

Spike took the bills and tucked them into his back pocket. “All right, cowboy. Talk.”

Lindsey started the truck up and pushed her into gear. “How come you don’t just rob people for money? I mean, you eat people, right?”

Spike bit his lip and stared at his hand on his knee. “Maybe I’m on the straight and narrow.”

Lindsey coughed a laugh. “Strait and narrow whore street?”

“I’m not killing,” Spike answered, with a flat inflection that brooked no argument.

“Why?”

Spike sneered. “Because of the reforming powers of the right woman. Look, are all these questions going to be so bloody personal? I thought you were only interested in Angel. Remember him? Bloke you can’t stand?”

Lindsey licked his bottom lip and seemed suddenly very involved in driving. Sure, it was a dangerous merge onto the main street at this hour of night, what with not a single other car in sight.

Spike didn’t want to discuss any of this, but out of some perverse need, he prompted, “You wanted to know why Angel rescued me? Do you know what he rescued me from?”

“You were being held at the Sal and Torus Auction House. I got a pretty good idea what you were in for.” Lindsey turned into a parking lot. Spike wasn’t surprised to see it was the back entrance to the Siesta Inn. He’d been seeing that a lot, lately. Under his breath, Lindsey said, “We used to do a lot of business with them.”

A hint of fear returned to Spike. “You don’t, now, do you?”

Lindsey turned off the truck and laid his arm on the top of the steering wheel. “What I can’t figure out is why Angel would give a rat’s ass about another vampire. It’s not really his M.O. What are you to him?”

Spike shifted to face Lindsey, his own arm on the dashboard, mirroring his pose. “What do you think?” he asked, letting his mouth hang open after “think”. Over his tongue, he tasted arousal, sharp and masculine.

Lindsey shifted, very slightly, but Spike knew exactly why he needed to ease the pressure of his jeans. “Angel doesn’t play for that team. I’d know.”

“Oh would you? I’ve known Angelus since Victoria was on the throne. Want me to tell you all the perverted, depraved things he used to do?” Spike leaned forward, watching Lindsey’s pupils dilate, his breathing pick up. “You want it, don’t you? He still has those old urges, you know. He just pretends he doesn’t, or gives himself a good thrashing until it goes away. Or, sometimes, he finds a nice, soulless beast he can not feel so guilty about buggering senseless.”

Lindsey’s eyes flicked down, he panted, “Aw, fuck,” and then he was on Spike, pushing him into the door, mouth hot and hungry, frenzied, breaking to cuss and twist as he tried to get over the stick-shift and on top of the vampire.

Spike slipped a hand down to rub his denim-covered cock before he could hurt himself. “Give me another fifty dollars, and you pay for the room,” he said, twisting his lips off of the cowboy’s for the brief moment needed to speak.

Lindsey groaned. “Didn’t mean to do this… shit, I have this thing about vampires…”

“You know, I never hear that.” He squeezed Lindsey’s shaft as well as he could through his jeans, and then lifted his hand away. Predictably, Lindsey bucked after the contact. “Fifty.”

Panting, Lindsey gathered control over himself enough to nod, and then scrambled backward out of the truck. He then struck a beeline for the motel office. Spike stayed in the cab, not to be conspicuous. He felt his own cock. It was half-hard. The cowboy was certainly pretty, and talking about Angelus was a mutual turn-on. He brushed the nape of his neck, weighing the odds he could get himself fully hard before he was naked. Most people preferred it; it made them feel wanted.

He looked up to see the man jogging back from the office, a plastic hang-tag dangling from his fist. He veered left half-way to the truck, waving Spike to follow him.

Spike’s dick twitched under his hand. Yes, it was good to feel wanted. He pressed the back of his neck anyway. Better not to chance it.

Lindsey left the door to the room gaping open, and was hurriedly pulling his button-up shirt off over his head when Spike followed him in.

Spike discretely closed the door and leaned against it. “You in a hurry, cowboy?”

Lindsey was caught with the shirt around his shoulders; it wasn’t designed to be pulled off like that and he had to wriggle and twist. His face a little red, he only gave Spike an exasperated look in answer and then bent over to thrash the shirt off.

Spike chuckled and peeled his own shirt off, easily. “What is it about vampires that gets you hot, hm?”

He set his hands on the bared waist, hot with desire and sweat, and Lindsey shivered. “Power,” he said, and ran his shaking hands over Spike’s chest.

“Do you get off, knowing I could snap your neck without breaking a sweat?”

“Maybe.” Lindsey pressed close. They were almost exactly the same height. He slipped his hands over Spike’s ass.

Spike brushed his lips against Lindsey’s ear. “You also know that you can’t hurt me. Not permanently.” He rubbed his thigh up and down against Lindsey’s crotch while reaching between their bellies to get at his fly. “No matter. What. You do.”

There was a quivering stillness, for just as long as it took to say those words, and then passion broke. Lindsey threw him down on the bed, landed on top violently. “No matter what?” He had Spike’s wrists in hand.

Spike arched up against him. “No matter what.”

There was a feral gleam in the young man’s eyes. His hands were hard, squeezing each handful of flesh as though to make sure it was there.

When the man reared back and punched him, Spike’s vision sparked and the sensation was surprise, not pain, like a splash of cold water. He laughed.

He was throttled, muscled onto his back. He struggled just as much as he could get away with, just enough to make it more fun. And it was fun, all the sweat and muscle and anger of it.

He didn’t even mind when Lindsey called him “Angel”.

Spike sat on the edge of the bed, counting the bills before pulling his jeans on. Lindsey wanted nothing more than to just lie there, replete, but through Herculean effort, he rose up on his side and reached for Spike’s waist to draw him back.

Spike put his hand over Lindsey’s, but didn’t let himself be turned. “It was guilt,” he said. “That’s why Angel got me out. Poor bugger felt guilty.” He patted Lindsey’s hand, once, and stood.

“Give the old pouf my regards,” he said as he walked to the door.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Finders, Keepers! Short and brutal, this chappie. Poor Spike.

Spike read the obituaries every day, snatching them from discarded papers in the bin by the bus stop on Wilson Street as he raced the dawn back to his crypt.

He had a nagging desperation to be useful, and all the free time, all the open-ended choices around him, felt oppressive.

It helped. Buffy was busy with a million mundane things, so he promised her he’d “handle” patrol. He liked patrol. He set himself high slayage quotas and fantasized that someday, someone, maybe Buffy, but more likely Giles or Xander, would comment in his hearing, “Gee, there don’t seem to be that many monsters in Sunnydale, anymore.”

But he was starting to develop a following – well, regulars, anyway, and they weren’t the kind of blokes who enjoyed waiting. Armed with the week’s obits and familiarity with the major family markers and active areas of the cemeteries, he could sweep through and stake likely fledges before they even got their legs above ground. Kick the dirt back into place and be back behind Main before the moon was over the warehouses.

Usually, someone was waiting for him. This particular night, it was a burly redneck-type cleaning his nails with a pocket knife whose scratched surface had seen more than one re-sharpening.

Without looking up as Spike approached, he asked, “There anything you don’t do?”

“Press charges.”

The man’s splinter-sharp smile told Spike he’d answered correctly. “Yeah, I heard right about you. Better be worth the drive all this way.” He pushed his flat palm into Spike’s chest, pressing him into the wall, and leaned close, the stubble on his chin scraping against Spike’s cheek as he whispered, a little too loudly and directly into Spike’s ear. “I have special needs, kid. I want someone I can hurt. Someone I can beat. And I don’t pay extra. You got that?”

The pocket knife was pressing into Spike’s throat. It took him a moment to notice that. He stretched his head back, feeling the skin scrape along the well-honed edge. “Whatever gets you off, mate.”

The knife slipped across his throat, light and quick, leaving a cut behind it that Spike wouldn’t even feel until a sweaty hand ground salt into the fine wound later that night. Big and Ugly folded the knife shut and tucked it away, balled his fist, and then slammed it into Spike’s gut.

Spike gasped, but grinned. What got this freak off wasn’t going to take any effort on his part. He didn’t even have to walk to the man’s car, as he was thrown to the ground, kicked, picked up, and then carried there.

***

“So, we’re pretty sure this is the nerd’s secret lair,” Willow said, setting her much-abused Southern California Road Atlas on the coffee table. It was open to the most-abused page: Sunnydale and Environs.

“Right. Looks pretty straight forward. I’ll…”

The door slammed. “Right. Got your message, Slayer. Who do I get to re-introduce to their kidneys?”

Three heads snapped up from the map. Buffy bit her lip. Silence prevailed.

Spike swaggered in from the doorway, then, with the lack of grace that had caused the front door to close so loudly, fell against one side of the archway that separated living room from hall. He quickly hid a grimace of pain. “Fyarl got your tongues? You left a note in the crypt about a meeting, so here I am. And why are we not meeting in the magic shop anymore?”

When more silence passed than was strictly comfortable, Xander cleared his throat. “You’ve got, uh, stuff,” he waved at his own face.

Spike’s eyebrows rose, and he quickly felt his face, gingerly. When his fingertips came away bloody, his expression was resigned disappointment. “Bollocks. You know I can’t see that.”

“What happened?” Buffy stared aghast at the damage. Spike’s eyes were blackened and scraped covered the left side of his face, some still bleeding. She saw how carefully he was holding himself, and the fact that he’d found a turtleneck somewhere. She didn’t think it was because he was cold.

“Demon.” Spike shrugged.

“Anya left,” Xander blurted, just to cover the silence. He coughed. “Uh, that’s why no Magic Box. She closed it.”

“Ah. So, search and rescue?” Spike cocked his head toward the map.

“No. We’re going after the nerd trio. YOU are going home and resting.”

“Really think we ought to go after demon-girl, slayer. She’s a flesh-and-blood vulnerable human and you let her run out on her own while you, what, comfort Jilting Joe here?”

Buffy squinted at him. “You’re deflecting, aren’t you? Not that the backbone isn’t nice to see.”

“You really look like crap,” Willow said, and approached him, hands out.

At about the same time, Xander held up his hands and said, “You try to be nice to a guy.”

Spike flinched away from Willow. “Right. I’ll find Anya. Make sure she’s not trying to sell ice water to Eskimos.”

“Spike, wait!”

Buffy got to the front door in time to see him running, with a decided limp, down the street. She sighed heavily and looked back at her friends.

“This is not my fault,” Xander said. “Feels like pretty much everything is, these days, but this, I have on good authority; not me.”

“We could wait on the nerds,” Willow offered. “They’re kinda… lame.”

Buffy looked down the road again, though there was no sign of Spike anymore. “I’m not sure if I should give him space, or protect him from himself.”

“There’s always the time-honored middleground,” Xander offered. “Some call it stalking. I call it: being off-hands, at hand.”

Slowly, Buffy nodded. “We’ll keep tabs on him. Make sure that… whatever…” she waved her hand in a circle in front of her face, “doesn’t become a habit. But I don’t want to wait on the nerds. They may not have the body count of a Steven King novel, but they’re well past the nuisance stage.”

Nodding in agreement, they all returned to their seats around the couch, to plan out the evening’s assault.

***

Spike’s nose was worthless, too clotted up with his own blood to smell anything else.

His back, legs, shoulders, neck, and arms weren’t doing that great, either. He leaned against the Magic Box, trying to find a resting position that didn’t hurt as much as walking, and taking in great gobs of breath, some of which, vaguely, smelled like demon-girl.

It was important to keep busy. Be useful. An old woman walking her Pekinese gawked at him a moment and then hurried away, clutching her coat to her chest.

Perhaps he hadn’t done such a good job cleaning himself up. Perhaps water was wet. He hurried on, eyes closed, concentrating on the often-lost, faint trace of Anya. She had a very clean scent, almost too normal, like the magics that had transformed her into a human had done a generic job of it, but there was just a hint of something spring-root about her.

He stumbled about, down streets and around corners, stopping, smelling, or trying to. He didn’t know what he’d do when he found her, but this was a job at least he could do. If Buffy had really needed him to beat something up, he wouldn’t have lasted three rounds.

He kept thinking he smelled the pug-ugly redneck who’d beaten him the night before, and then fucked him over the hood of a white range rover. Then he’d taken him to a dilapidated ranch house that was indeed a somewhat long drive from Sunnydale, out in the sparse California dry lands, where everything starts blending in to Nevada.

It could be some of the man’s sweat was still on him, in the wounds on his chest that kept sticking the irritating turtle-neck to him. He was going to throw that away as soon as he confirmed the location of Xander’s jilted bride.

Maybe, wherever she was, she had whiskey.

With this hopeful thought, he redoubled his efforts and quickened his pace.

A hand suddenly stopped him, landing in the center of his chest. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but red tartan for a moment, before he focused and realized it was a tartan-colored shirt, on a big chest, on the big, ugly brute he’d limped away from that morning.

“Well. There you are.”

“Come back all this way for little old me?”

“You weren’t in your usual spot.” His hand slipped down to grip Spike’s side.

“Thought I’d take a night off. Some big bully gave me a thrashing.”

Spike felt the man’s hard cock pressing into him as he was pulled flush against him. “Didn’t expect to find you gone when I woke up. I was going to drive you back.”

“I hitched a ride.”

“I bet you did.” Big hands squeezed sore flesh, awakening deep injuries. He tightened his grip to near agony, then released Spike. “Come on, pretty boy. We got all weekend to play.”

Spike staggered, touching a light-post to steady himself. “Heh. I’d love to, mate, really, but I have to find a runaway bird and…”

The slap silenced him. “You talking back to me, boy?”

Spike felt a smart remark rising. He pushed it down. “You still paying?”

The redneck grabbed the front of Spike’s jeans, pulling him forward, he shoved some folded bills in the gap between flesh and denim. “Now come on,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Spike said.

Finding Anya wasn’t really urgent, and what could go wrong in his absence? He wasn’t exactly important. He followed Mr. Redneck back to his Range Rover.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this chapter is especially slap-and-dash. I'd, like, stop and re-read and edit it some, if I wasn't so appallingly lazy.

The ranch house had a pervasive smell of dust and motor-oil. It was a masculine smell, devoid of home-cooking or any hint of a warm family atmosphere, though Spike saw yellowed finger-paintings on the ‘fridge and a line of dead plants on the windowsill, garlanded with cobwebs, that spoke of a family having once lived here.

That was all the sight-seeing Spike was able to do before his knees were kicked out from behind. He stumbled and scrambled forward, only to be yanked back by his hair. His elbow smacked into his attacker and the chip fired, graying his vision. He let the redneck press him down over the kitchen table and strip his jeans off.

“Love how you still struggle. Like a fish on the line.” A chin springy with short beard-hairs pressed into his neck while hands worked furiously at his back, undoing flies. “Let’s get my hook in you.”

Spike grabbed onto the edge of the table and pushed back, because that made things go easier. He was rewarded with a groan of pleasure and the sharp burn of quick penetration.

Hands roamed over him, pressing each bruise, taking stock like a miser counting his coins. “You were made for this”

Something sticky covered the table under Spike’s right hip. His skin made tacky noises ripping off of it with each thrust. It was all right, though. He closed his eyes and relaxed into the familiar sensation of being used.

Then he was thrown to the floor, the john holding him down with one booted foot while he did up his flies again. “Stay down. Good bitch. Now crawl.”

And so Spike crawled. The floors were dusty and trash-littered. The John huffed and heaved, tired and short of breath, dropping himself onto a sagging plaid sofa. He made Spike crouch in front of him as a footstool while he watched the evening news.

At the first commercial break, he kicked Spike and ordered him to fetch a beer from the kitchen, which he made Spike hold for him, kneeling at his side. He called him “slave” and “bitch” and “whore.”

Spike almost chuckled. The man had, clearly, a year’s worth of Penthouse Letters to re-enact.

He crushed his beer can against Spike’s head, and then tossed it aside. The news program was over, so he turned it off.

“Come on, give me a show.”

He pushed Spike back from him with his foot, and Spike had a few seconds to think what this meant before the man helpfully said, “Strip.”

Spike crawled onto the sturdiest table in the room and fumbled with his fly, awkward until he got some music playing in his mind. Then he swayed, imagining a beat as he ran his hands down his own body and tried to do a sensuous job of stripping.

“Eyes open, look at me.”

The redneck grinned his knife-edge smile, appreciating his flush of humiliation.

Spike was out of items of clothing to remove. He took a step off the coffee-table, and was stopped with a foot against his shin. “Jack off,” the john said.

Spike flinched, and that made the man grin even broader. “Got a problem with that, princess?”

“Rather not, yeah.”

Like a flash, anger descended on him, fists and insults, until he was kneeling, legs spread, a hand on his cock, trying to coax it into response. He would have pressed the sensor on his neck, but every time he reached back, his hand was swatted. “What are you trying to do, idiot? Your dick’s down there.”

He burned with humiliation, which did not, contrary to many different scenarios, help him get hard. His pleas to stop, and the obvious pain of pulling on limp flesh, did, however, make the john hard and ready for more action.

The redneck was a novice at torture, but picked up quick on the things Spike hated most. The worst was when he realized he was being tied up on a bed under a large window with no curtains on it. He’d panicked. “No! Wait – the sun. Please, can’t let the sunlight hit me.”

The redneck looked surprised at his sudden squeamishness, but took full advantage. Spike spent much of the next day huddled in a cardboard box, pleading uselessly as a pocket-knife plunged through the flimsy walls again and again, leaving glowing holes that peppered his body with burns.

***

It was several days before the john released Spike. He stumbled gratefully across town, no thought in his mind other than getting to his crypt and falling unconscious. Blood would be good, but he could worry about it in the morning.

He had just made it to the cemetery entrance when he heard Buffy’s voice behind him, “There you are!”

He winced, wrapping his duster tight around himself. “In a bit of a hurry, here, slayer.”

Buffy stepped in front of him, her brow crinkled, eyes darting all over him. It felt like she was seeing not just the wounds, but what caused them. Spike ducked and tried to be invisible.

“Where the hell have you been, Spike?” She grabbed his arm when he tried to flee. He hissed at the pain, pressing the leather of his coat into charred flesh.

He sneered at her. “Well, from sun-up to sun-down I cower under a rock, and between those times I’m doing your job.”

“Oh no, you don’t get to do that. I’ve been doing plenty of ‘my job’ while you’ve been gone. It’s been DAYS, Spike.”

“Not like you need me,” he countered, peevishly. “Surpised you even noticed.”

She looked to be hanging on very tenuously to the will not to smack him. Her face shook with anger. “I nearly killed Dawn, Spike. And Xander. And Willow. I was poisoned, delusional, I almost killed everyone. And yes, I could have used a little help. Like maybe the only person around strong enough to hold me off. Instead you were gone. Where?”

He tried to flinch back as she reached for him, but she was faster than him, and soon had his face tilted up, into the streetlight, where she could see the burns, the blood, the bruises. “Where are you going to get all beat up, and who are you letting do this to you?”

“Didn’t let…”

“Spike.” She quelled him with a look.

“Please, love, just let me go to bed.”

She did let go of him, or move when he tried to slip around her. “You’re going to slip away, make like it’s no big deal, and what happens if the next time I see you, you’re a pile of dust?”

“Would you care?” He asked, with a note of hope.

“Gah! Of course I’d care. God, you are so…!” She waved her free hand overhead.

He smiled, crookedly because of a split lip. “You do care.”

“Don’t remind me. Come on, we’re going home. MY home. At least then I can keep an eye on you.”

“But Buffy…”

“Don’t ‘but Buffy’ me,” she said, and pulled him after her down the street. “You want to be all better and on your own. I get that. I want you to be all better and on your own. But you’re not. And we can’t just pretend it’s that way.”

“Don’t want to be a burden to you, Slayer.”

“Not knowing where you are, that’s a burden.” She tugged him along. He wasn’t fighting her, not anymore, but she seemed to like knowing she was in charge.

They reached the house and he let her push him into the shower.

And it was good, really good, to be clean, and then bandaged up, and tucked in nice and snug in an old army blanket on a cot in the basement. He was so tired there was no fight in him, no desire even to object to being cared for. He just took the comfort and dropped off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

So he was living with the Slayer, then. That wasn’t expected, but it was alright. He offered to pay rent, and smiled when Buffy icily told him that Willow was paying half the mortgage payment now and she didn’t need any assistance.

So, as before, he gave the money to Willow, who only protested a little that it was an awful lot. She made up for it by making sure to always keep the blood in the fridge stocked.

“That money’s to help Buffy out,” He hissed to her, in the privacy of the hallway.

She shrugged. “It is helping her out. She’d want to buy you blood herself, wouldn’t she?”

“But I can support myself.”

“Fine. Buy blood.” Willow shrugged away from him.

It seemed like no one wanted to talk with him, be near him. Like they were all afraid he’d do something sudden and crazy.

Well, except for the Slayer, who looked at him like she feared SHE would do something sudden and crazy. Like throw him against the kitchen counter and have her way with him. He made sure to drop plentiful hints that this would be okay.

But they weren’t often alone. There was a cordon of scoobies, now, watching Spike’s every move. He couldn’t slip away to the back streets. Every time he managed to get three steps from the house, someone, Dawn, usually, would appear at his elbow like magic. “Hey, going patrolling? Mind if I come?”

“Yes, I do mind.”

“Mm-hm. Well, too bad. Buffy said no letting you slink off alone.”

He began to feel nervous on patrols, like one of his regulars, offended by a long stint of no fucking, would jump at him from the bushes.

Mostly, he stayed home.

So he was there, at Buffy’s house, when Angel knocked on the front door.

Angel, whose eyes went straight to him the minute Willow opened the front door.

“Angel!” Willow gasped.

Spike jumped up from the couch, muttered an excuse, and headed for the kitchen, hoping from thence to escape down to the basement or out the back door.

“Spike,” Angel said, in a commanding tone.

Buffy trotted down the stairs, her hair wrapped in a towel and a steamy cloud of freshly-bathed scent around her. “Angel?”

“Spike,” Angel said, a little louder. “We need to talk.”

Spike was trapped by Dawn coming in from the kitchen to see what was going on. He sighed and turned. "Got nothing to say to you, pillock."

Angel cocked his head in mock-interest. "Too busy being a whore?"

The word hung by itself in the air for a protracted moment. Angel took a step into the room. "Sorry to break the news, Buffy. Seems you haven't been doing such a good job looking after Spike."

"I..." Willow looked from face to face. "I'll go... go."

Dawn stormed forward, screeching invective at Angel for insulting her erstwhile babysitter.

But for Angel and Spike, all was still, their gazes locked in silence, until Spike sagged in defeat.

He sat on the couch, waiting for the inevitable result.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well! Last chapter Spike's little secret got reveled. How ever shall people react?
> 
> Warning: more bad stuff happening to Spike. Angel behaving badly.

“How dare you come here and criticize the way I’m handling things?” Buffy squared off in front of Angel, hands on her hips. Lesser men would have quailed.

Angel loomed over Buffy, his fists clenched. “Did you need the money that badly, Buffy? Is that why you had to get him back?”

No one was surprised when Buffy smacked him. Nor that Dawn said, “Yeah!” right after it, like she was watching a sporting event.

Spike sighed. “Bit… might not want to be here for this.”

“As if,” she responded, and sat down next to him, one arm protectively over his shoulders.

Spike tried, gently, to urge her up and toward the stairs, while Angel rubbed his cheek and growled, “I know what’s been going on here.”

Buffy had her hands on her hips. “Oh? And what is going on, exactly, because I live here, and apparently I don’t know.”

“He,” Angel pointed over Buffy’s shoulder at Spike, “has been selling his ass all over town, and you didn’t know?”

Dawn’s arms tightened around Spike, as though to protect him from these accusations.

Spike picked her up.

“Hey!”

“Really don’t want you here for this,” he said, carrying her to the stairs.

Dawn twisted and slipped from his grip, causing the chip to fire as he grabbed to keep her from escaping. He fell against the newel post, gripping his head, while Dawn said, “Ha!” and Buffy said, “Spike, is any of this true?”

“No?” he offered. It came out as pained and unsure as he felt.

“I have my sources,” Angel said.

Buffy whirled on him, “And you trust this source more than me?”

“He had no reason to lie to me. Not about this.”

“I don’t care if he was Ghandi. This is my house, and my town, and…”

Spike went up the stairs, alone. He was sitting on the floor outside Buffy’s room when she came to him, looking haggard. He hadn’t listened to the shouting downstairs; he could guess clearly enough what was said.

Her shadow hung over him. He raised his head to see her weary, resolute face. “Did you do this?” she asked. “Don’t lie to me, Spike.”

So tired of the fighting, of denying, Spike just nodded.

“God!” Buffy said, and slapped her thigh.

“I just wanted to help. Get you out of that awful place. Didn’t mean to cause you any trouble, love.”

“Well, you did.”

“But I haven’t… again. Not since you brought me here. I swear it. C’mon, love, you haven’t exactly let me out of your sight.”

Buffy’s hand was on her face, her hair sticking out like tufts of straw from where she’d mussed it in her frustration. “I can’t keep an eye on you all the time, Spike. I already have Dawn to worry about.”

“I’ll help you…”

“And I’m supposed to trust you with Dawn, now? After… after this? What do you think child services is going to say, Spike?”

“I didn’t hurt anyone, did I? It wasn’t stealing or anything.”

Buffy gave him a pitying glance. He dropped his head, not to see it. She sighed and headed back to the stairs. “Come on. Angel wants to come to your rescue or something, and there’s no getting rid of him.”

And so Spike’s meager possessions were bundled up in a cardboard box and it (and he) were set in the front seat of Angel’s Plymouth, to be taken to LA, where Angel would “Keep an eye on him.”

Angel did not keep an eye on him during the drive. He kept both eyes assiduously on the road, and said nothing to his passenger.

After the first half-hour of driving, Spike was tired of the silence, which felt so much like a punishment. He quietly asked, “Why do you even want me?”

“I don’t,” Angel answered.

“It wasn’t Buffy’s fault, you know. She was keeping me off the street. You saw that, right?”

Angel didn’t answer.

“It was for her sake, Angel. Poor slayer needs money. Saving the world doesn’t pay bollocks, and the poor Bit needs food and clothes and all the latest cool fripperies. She’s a teen-aged girl, you know. It isn’t easy taking care of her.” Still no response from Angel. “I’d do anything for Buffy, anything at all.”

Angel’s mouth was a tight line. “Already offering yourself to me, William?”

It was Spike’s turn to be silent, searching in vain for a clue in Angel’s expression to how he should respond.

Angel shot him a glance like a throwing star. “That is where this is going, isn’t it? Buffy needs money, oh so badly. You’ll be a good boy if I just send her a few dollars.”

Spike managed a quiet, breathless, “Fuck you, Liam.”

“No, tell me, Spike, where did you intend this conversation to go?” Angel’s arm shot out, landing in Spike’s lap, grapping a handful of whatever he could and squeezing hard in a cruel parody of foreplay. “Lindsey said he only wanted to talk to you, but you had your hand down his pants before he could open his mouth.”

“Ngh,” Spike said, back sliding up the seat as he tried to escape the pain.

Angel gave one more savage twist and returned his hand to the steering wheel, signaling to change lanes. “Seriously, Spike. I don’t take it personally that you fucked that evil prick; he just happened to be near you when you got an urge to slut around. I get that.”

Having gasped himself back down to calm, Spike suddenly laughed. “Is that it, again?”

Angel gave him one angry glare, and went back to staring straight ahead.

“It is, isn’t it?” Spike mused. “You still want to be the only one who’s ever fucked me over. Oh, poor Angelus! You’re way, way too late.”

Angel’s driving was affected by his anger, making him turn the wheel too fast, too sharply. They jerked their way through traffic. “No, Spike. I just have to wonder why every time I turn around, you’re whoring yourself out.”

Spike curled against the car door, trying to make himself as small as possible. “Got nothing else to sell, have I? You’re the one always saying I’ve got no brain.”

Angel made a non-committal grunt, and was silent the rest of the trip, even when Spike said, “I really will be good.”

When they arrived at the Hyperion, Spike found that they were prepared for him. A small guest room had plywood nailed over the window, and a door that locked from the outside. The wood was raw and bare where the interior lock was removed.

Gunn stood aside, holding a screwdriver. Small bits of sawdust clung to his sweatshirt. He gave Spike a cold, wary look.

Angel followed Spike into the small room, blocking the door while Spike set his box of clothes down. Spike pressed the bed, feeling its softness. It was stiff, but adequate. He turned to Angel. “What did you tell them?” He nodded in the direction of the hallway.

“That you were working for Lindsey, and a danger to Buffy.”

Angel crosses his arms, hard expression daring Spike to deny this is truth. It is, in a way, but not the way Spike is sure Angel’s underlings will interpret it. They now see him as a traitor, and nothing he says to the contrary will be believed.

Spike cleared his throat. “Thanks,” he said, and opened the top drawer in the small dresser. He lifted his folded clothes out of their box and dropped them neatly into place.

If he’d had time to pack, this might have taken more than one motion.

“You’ll stay in this room. If we need you, we’ll come and get you. The door will be locked, so don’t try to leave.”

“I’m to be a prisoner, then?”

“I’m trusting you with this room, Spike. Break that trust and there’s a much less comfortable cage down in the basement.”

Spike nodded. When he looked up from closing the dresser drawer, Angel was already leaving the room. There was a resounding click as the deadbolt slid home.

Spike sat on the bed and wished he’d thought to bring a book. Eventually he drifted off to sleep. The bed was so old, so long unused, that it smelled of no-one and nothing but age itself.

In the morning, sunlight cast a dim glow about the edges of the plywood blocking off the window. Spike wished they’d put up some less permanent block, so he could see the outside. But it was probably just a brick-lined air shaft, with his luck.

Spike paced. He did push-ups and crunches, all the exercises he knew that could be done in the narrow strip of floor between dresser and bed. He exercised nude, so his clothes wouldn’t get sweaty or dirty, and lay on the bed panting when he was tired, letting his skin dry before he dressed.

He worried the whole time that someone would come through the door. The worry helped time pass, though, so he didn’t do anything about it.

The sunlight was dimming, so that he had to squint to be sure there was still some light soaking the join of wood and wall, when someone knocked on the door.

He stared at it the door. It was already opening when he belatedly called out, “Come in.”

It was Fred, with a thermos. “Hi, just bringing your lunch. Well, dinner. Well… whatever. Supper, I guess.” She held out the thermos.

“Thank you, love. Don’t suppose…”

“I’m not really supposed to talk to you,” she shrugged, apologetic. “You wanna drink that fast so I can take the thermos back, or do you want me to come get it in the morning?”

Spike held the thermos to his stomach, feeling warmth through the plastic. “C-come back for it?”

Fred nodded and ducked out the door, snicking the lock shut behind her.

Spike sat, holding the bottle of blood until his skin was heated to the same temperature around it and he could no longer tell it was warm. He shook a little, realizing how easily he could have not thought to keep the thermos and ended up denied a second break in the monotony.

Three days passed, exactly the same. It was the watcher, Wesley, who came to get the thermos in the morning, silent and uncommunicative, and Gunn who delivered the next night’s food. They rotated off and on. Spike waited for Fred, who would at least smile or blush or shake her head, instead of coldly ignoring him.

Two visits a day, and a mug of warmed pig’s blood, were all that broke in on the tyranny of isolation. He had long arguments with himself, mostly quoted from the trainer’s words: why was he always a prisoner? Why couldn’t he be free? Not even a little?

He deserved it, of course. He couldn’t be trusted to take care of himself.

He tried to take care of himself. To keep himself neat and clean, as he could, with no water, no towels. He exercised as he was taught, especially those important muscles that would help him please others.

He woke on the third day from an errotic dream, hard and squirming on the narrow bed, sweaty sheets wrapped around himself like a rope. He stilled, forcing himself to turn onto his back, lest he keep rubbing off on the mattress. That wasn’t allowed. He balled his fists and held them at his side, and for a while, enjoyed the torture of need, it distracted him.

The door opened. It was Angel. He crossed to the dresser to snatch up the empty thermos.

“Wait,” Spike said, a note of pleading in his voice. He crawled toward Angel, the sheet tumbled between his legs.

Angel set the thermos back down.

“I’ve been good, haven’t I?” Spike asked. He held onto the baseboard, eyes seeking Angel’s. “Haven’t made any noise, not a peep.”

Angel’s nostrils flared. Spike bit his lip, knowing what he must smell. Angel said, “What do you want, Spike? A medal?”

“Just stay an’ talk with me a minute. I’m going stir-crazy.”

“So I’m supposed to keep you entertained, as well as fed and housed?”

Despite the angry words, Spike could tell Angel wasn’t completely unaffected by the site of him, naked except for the winding sheet, redolent of sleep and arousal. He lowered his lashes. “Wouldn’t be that bad, would it? We’ll talk about whatever you like.”

Angel grabbed his bicep hard, lifting him off the bed. “You aren’t buying yourself better treatment.”

“I know that. Please, Angel. Whatever you want, whatever you like. Beat me up, if that’s really your cup of tea. I don’t care. Anything is better than nothing.”

Angel threw him back down, and stood over him, breathing heavy, through his nostrils, fists clenched. Spike licked his lip and arched his head back, afraid to do much else, lest it drive him away.

It drove him away. The door slammed so hard dust rained from the ceiling.

Spike lay alone, naked, and hard, staring at the ceiling.

Four more days of routine: Fred, Wes, Wes again, Gunn, Fred, Gunn, Wes. Angel didn’t come back. And then there were nine days where no one came. He paced and squirmed and did 400 extra sit-ups, but the door never opened. He leaned against it, listening to the far-off noises of the hotel. He heard someone walking around. He bit his lip to keep from shouting. Each day he told himself he could wait one more day before being rude enough to announce his presence. One day more.

On the tenth day, Angel came back. Spike heard him approaching the door, smelled him, and blood, long before a hand landed on the latch. He was dressed, and neat - as neat as he could manage. He stood, waiting, eyes down, not to appear too eager or impatient or…

The door opened. Spike couldn’t help himself, he fell to his knees.

Angel’s fine wool slacks swayed a bit with the breeze. “Jesus, Spike,” Angel said, closing the door behind him.

“Sorry,” Spike said to the floor. “I was so scared you’d forgotten me and… sorry.” He looked up. “They used to make me beg for my food, you know. Felt like years.”

Angel dropped the thermos. Spike had to scramble to grab it before it hit the floor.

Angel sat on the bed and watched him cradle the thermos to his chest. “You don’t have to beg for it.”

“I know.”

“So? Drink up.”

He gulped it down without a breath, so fast he hardly tasted it. When it was gone he opened his eyes to find Angel staring at him, mouth slightly agape.

“Damn,” Angel said.

Spike ducked his head and licked a stray drop from the lip of the thermos before screwing the lid back on. “I was trained, you know… lots of training on holding my breath, swallowing fast. You’d have been proud. You always hated that I couldn’t stop myself from breathing.”

“How’d they do it? How’d they break you?”

Spike laughed without humor. “That’s a long story, and not very interesting.”

“From the breathing,” Angel clarified, watching him shrewdly.

“Oh.” Spike shifted his legs under him, to sit more comfortably on the floor. “Water, mostly. There was this tank, just big enough to kneel in, deep enough to go over my head. Sometimes someone would stand in there with me, to get a good suck. Sometimes they just used this fake cock, some sensor in it to say if I was trying hard enough. Kept getting told I wasn’t really trying, you know?”

He waited for Angel to tell him he’d heard enough, but Angel was silent, so he cleared his throat and kept going, “After they felt I was broken enough, they moved me out of the humiliation and torture and into a brothel, where I was to get my ‘vocational’ training.” Spike smirked and glanced up at Angel, who was listening attentively. “Anyway, first thing they said was that I gave shit blow-jobs. So that was a priority. I mean, it was part of the begging for my food in the morning. I tried to tell them you’d given me plenty of instruction in that area. Remember? You’d clout me about the ears and say ‘pay attention’ like you were instructing me in reciting latin or some bollocks. Heh, they weren’t impressed.”

Angel made a sound, a sort of growl and groan. His eyes were closed.

“Angel?” Spike carefully set the thermos down and shifted onto his knees. He placed one hand on Angel’s thigh, and when he didn’t react, set his other hand on the other, situating himself between Angel’s slightly spread legs. Very quietly, he asked, “Want me to show you, what I learned?”

Angel’s eyes snapped open, and his fist snapped into Spike’s face, sending him into the dresser, which rattled and rocked against the wall in the force of the impact.

“You little slut,” Angel growled, and yanked Spike to his feet by the front of his shirt. “You’re still trying to sell yourself to me, aren’t you?”

Spike shook his head. “No. No, Angel. I know you don’t want me”

“Damn right, I don’t want you. If those slave-traders come looking for you, I’ve half a mind to let them have you. You’re worthless to me, Spike. Worthless to everyone who isn’t a pimp.”

Angel threw him on the bed. One big hand grabbed the back of his jeans and yanked them down hard.

“You’re right,” Spike said. “Angel, I’m sorry, and you’re right.”

Angel picked Spike’s hips up and shoved them forward, forcing him into a kneeling posture. His thumbs rubbed hard along the fullness of his ass and jabbed in, together, pulling him open like he was separating two halves of an orange.

He spat and thrust in on that slightest amount of preparation. “Is this what you want?” He shoved himself in fully, violently. “Is it?”

Spike bit his lip, holding a cry of agony inside as he quickly nodded.

“Fucking. Stupid. Gah. Little crying whore.”

Angel set a punishing pace, powerful body snapping forward and back. He pushed Spike’s face into the mattress with one hand and pulled his hips up and flush with the other.

Tears and snot and blood stuck the sheets, rubbing raw against Spike’s face.

Angel came with a shudder of surprise, a stutter in his pace. He pulled back sharply, at once, dripping blood and come in a trail down Spike’s bunched jeans and the sheets.

Spike could still feel the impression of his body against his, the warmth of friction and the still-dissipating shock of penetration, when the door shut and locked again.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday **tamakin**!
> 
> This is just for you and your fabulous birthday! I have done picked up the story I began for you and abandoned. *mwah* I in fact think it shall move from the H into the C at long last. How nice I am! It's a little present for Spikey, too!

The sun was going down outside when Angel came back. Spike heard him a long time, shuffling indecisively outside the door. He sat on the edge of the bed and composed himself.

When the door finally opened, Spike was proud he didn’t move, just flinched a little. He counted to three before turning to face Angel, who had a thermos, of course, and hung in the doorway like he was afraid to enter.

“I…” Angel closed his free hand around the thermos, tapped it, and then extended his arm out. When Spike didn’t come to take the thermos, he took one step forward.

“Spike, I’m sorry. Just take it, please. I know I’m late.”

Spike stood and took the thermos. “Thank you,” he said.

Angel ran a hand over his face and looked out the open door. “I’ve… there’s been a lot of stuff going on in my life. Stress. I’m not proud of how I’m handling it.”

“It’s all right, Angel. It’s my fault, really. And I’ll try to do better.”

Angel gave him a pitying look and fled.

He had to hurry back and lock the door, Spike heard, having run off just shutting it.

Spike sat on the bed, cuddling the thermos to his chest, and wondered why it didn’t occur to him to try to leave.

***

“Did you feed Spike?”

Angel blinked out of a reverie to see Gunn standing across from him in the Hyperion’s kitchen, cup of coffee in hand.  
Gunn rolled one hand, like he was beckoning words out of Angel. “It was my turn, but you said you wanted to do it?”

Angel looked down at his own, untouched glass of blood. He’d thought he’d be alone in the cavernous, industrial-ugly kitchen. Mostly people ate in the lobby, or their rooms, preferring the cramped intimacy of a hot plate and mini-fridge to the empty sixteen-burner stove and racks of s-hooks.

Gunn shook his head chidingly. “Hey man, you’re the one who wanted a pet, you’ve got to feed him.”

Gunn spread his hands as Angel glared at him. “Okay, bad joke. But I worry about the little guy. I know he’s evil and all, but it’s kind of creepy, keeping him locked up in there.” Gunn dropped into a chair a few spaces down from Angel. “Fred and I were talking. Maybe we could take him out? Walk him or something? I mean, you obviously think he doesn’t deserve to die. Maybe we can turn him to the light side of the force. Get him to fight bad guys.”

“No,” Angel said. “I… leave Spike to me. I shouldn’t have made you help me take care of him. He’s my responsibility.”

Gunn leaned forward, peering up at Angel’s downturned face. “Are you all right?”

Angel straightened, took a sip of his room-temperature blood and nodded decisively. “Yes. I’m fine. Just… let everyone know. I’ll take care of Spike from now on. On my own.”

“What’s the eventual plan?”

“Plan?”

Gunn smiled. “Well, you can’t just keep the guy forever.”

“It’s not your problem.”

“Angel, buddy, you’re going to have to tell us something about him at some point. Cordy says he’s a big bad, but he looks like a kicked puppy, and you tell us he can’t be let free but don’t kill him? I mean, what are we supposed to think?”

 

Angel forced himself to finish off the blood. It was cool and starting to congeal a bit on the top. Then he got up and went to the sink to rinse the mug out. “He’s evil, but harmless. He was helping Buffy, so I owe it to her to take care of him. And it would be wrong to let him go free, because he’d get hurt, or find a way to hurt someone else.”

“I thought you said he was working for Lindsey?”

Angel opened the one cupboard that was clean and frequently-used, where a collection of cast-off coffee mugs sat on a sheet of cherry-patterned shelf paper. All his mugs were separated by a sheet of typing paper with ‘eeew blood’ written on it in Cordy’s cursive script.

“It’s a complicated story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Angel closed the cupboard again and turned to face Gunn. “I’m not ready to tell it.”

“All right, if that’s how you feel. But you know you can confide in me.”

Angel doubted that very much. “Thanks,” he said, and went back to his office.

***

Angel didn’t want the others to tend to Spike, because he might let something slip about how he’d taken advantage of him. He wasn’t proud of his cowardice, but he told himself that it really was his responsibility to take care of Spike. His penance, sort of.

Still, he found himself putting off going to deliver the blood, sometimes to the point where he realized a day or two had passed. Spike was growing thin, and quiet, staring at him with worshipful eyes, starving for attention as well as sustenance and pathetically grateful for any crumb of either.

“Liam, why won’t you fuck me again? Wasn’t it nice?”

Fortunately, Spike quickly learned that any attempt at seduction sent Angel running, but it was almost preferable to the respectful quiet.

Angel quickly pushed aside any questions the others raised. It was best they forget about Spike entirely. He told himself he needed to schedule the feedings for when others weren’t around. That made putting them off even easier.

And then they were attacked by the moisture-sucking slugs, and Connor dropped out of the ceiling all surly and teenaged and impossible to get to know, and, well, business was busy.

It was only when Buffy walked in the lobby one day that he remembered what that nagging feeling of having forgot something was about.

“Have you forgotten how to use a phone?” Buffy stood at the entryway, fists on her hips.

Angel’s mind went through a neat progression of happiness to see her, followed by concern over why she’d come, followed by an internal “Fuck,” and turning to the desk calendar to see how long it had been.

“Spike. How is he? I left, like, 80 messages. Finally I gave up and used my day off to drive here. And do you have any idea what the traffic is like on 101 in the mornings?” Buffy stomped into the lobby, saw Cordy by the phone and waved.

“Cute boots,” Cordy said. “The bleached menace has been quiet as a lamb. I forgot he was even here.”

“Well let me see him. I figure I have two minutes before I have to turn around and head home if I want to be there this century.”

Buffy folded her arms expectantly.

Angel scratched his head. “Um… let me go… get him.”

To his dismay, Buffy followed him up the stairs. “You can wait in the lobby,” he offered. “He might be…” his mind blanked on a suitable excuse. “Indisposed.”

“Please. I’ve seen Spike completely indisposed…” Buffy frowned. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

Angel groaned. “He might want to clean up before he sees you. I don’t think he’s had a bath.”

“I have to be back for a morning shift tomorrow, Angel, I really don’t care.”

It was like watching an oncoming car in slow-motion, unable to swerve out of the way. Angel tried to think of a desperate tactic, but soon Gunn was showing Buffy the correct door and Angel had to provide the key, because they were all just staring at him, waiting.

Buffy gasped as the door opened. Spike was laying on the bed, twisted chest-down, hips at an angle. His t-shirt hung loosely, the knobs of his spine showing clearly. His unkempt hair fell about his face in straggling clumps.

“I forgot,” Angel said, wishing the floor would swallow him, or preferably Spike, whole.

The words hung on the empty air for a long time, with the smell of dust and unwashed vampire.

Buffy ran to the bedside and gathered Spike into her arms.

Spike feebly tried to raise his head.

“I was… there were things. It was busy. Gunn? Back me up. I just forgot.”

Buffy turned to glare at him. “You left him locked in a room and you forgot about him?”

“He’s a vampire. He’ll be fine. I know it looks bad.”

Gunn gave Angel a look Angel never expected to see from him and pushed passed Angel to stand near Buffy. “Come on, I’ll help you move him.”

“How could you do this?” Buffy said to Gunn.

“I didn’t know. Angel said…”

“Oh, don’t tell me what Angel said.”

“Buffy! Gunn! Put him down. He’s in no condition to move.”

And then Angel found himself punched into the opposite wall of the hallway. Buffy shook out her fist. “Go get some blood.”

Buffy wouldn’t speak to him after that, but coldly supervised Spike being fed blood through a straw. He only managed half a cup before passing out. Then she and Gunn carried him to the lobby, where, after much cajoling and nudging, he woke up to drink a second half-cup.

Cordy even relented in her Spike-hatred to fetch a bowl of soapy water and a rag to clean his face and hands.

She then walked over to where Angel watched from the shadows by the elevator. “Angel, you really screwed this one up.”

“He’s still Spike, Cordy, no matter how helpless and fragile he looks right now.”

“He looks like a famine victim. Angel, you don’t do that to… to anything. I wouldn’t treat a potted plant like that!”

“Potted plants don’t try to kill you.” Angel stomped over to Buffy, who was stroking Spike’s face, peering into his eyes that fluttered open and closed. His expression was wondering and confused, when he was awake enough to have one.

“Buffy, I know you’re angry, and you’re right to be angry. I screwed up. But there’s no real harm done. I’ll make sure he gets enough to eat and he’ll be his old, annoying self in no time.”

Buffy stood to face him. “And I’m supposed to trust you, why? How?”

“You’re over-reacting. It’s just Spike. A vampire.”

Fred stood next to the counter, chewing on the side of her thumb. “I had a pet lizard, once. I caught him, see, and put him in this cupboard in the garage where Daddy kept his varnishes and things in jars. Then I went to summer camp, and forgot about him. I… soon as I saw the garage as we drove up, it hit me, and I ran to that cupboard and opened it as fast as I could, sobbing, crying… and…”

Angel grabbed Spike’s shoulder and shook it. “Stop faking! Tell them you’re fine, now, you little bastard!”

“Angel!” Cordy grabbed him.

He had to stand back and watch the others bundle Spike up in a blanket to get him to Buffy’s car, and send her off with a cooler of blood and directions around the most-congested areas.

Angel watched her drive off, wondering if he was ever going to see either of them again, or if he’d deserve to.

His son, Wes, now Spike and Buffy – Angel was doing a fine job of running everyone he cared about off. As he turned back to the lobby, the expressions Gunn and Cordy gave him weren’t reassuring, either.

“I just forgot,” he said, pleading.

Fred touched his arm, and he gathered her into a tight hug.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heh. Nothing brings writer's block for me like writing COMFORT.
> 
> This chapter: Lots of comfort for poor battered Spikey. Spuffy overtones will likely continue throughout the end of the story.

Spike had been slipping in and out of dazed dreams and hunger-visions for so long it was a while before he realized he was awake, and fed, and in a room that smelled of cleanliness, make-up, and Buffy.

He sat up and immediately swooned – a term he wished he could disavow.

Below he heard kitchen noises, bangs and clatters, and Dawn and Buffy calling to each other across rooms, the cheerful noise of an automotive advert on the television.

If it was a dream, it was a lovely one. He rolled his face into the pillow and inhaled deeply. Traces of shampoo, hair oils, sweat and sunshine pulled from the cotton fibers of her pillow.

It must be a vision. It had been so long since they’d done this to him, but maybe he’d done something wrong, something to make them send him back. There was no other explanation; he was sealed in Angel’s hotel one moment and lying in Buffy’s bed the next. Maybe the hotel was real. Maybe it wasn’t. How far back was the last real thing? Did it matter?

He felt so tired. Please, he thought, let me not do anything wrong. Not again.

“Yes, I checked on him,” came Dawn’s voice, louder, just outside the door. “He’s still asleep.” The door opened, letting in more sound, light, and smell, and then closed again. Dawn stomped back down the hall, away from him – or the impression of Dawn seemed to. “Should we just wake him up? I mean, it’s getting creepy.”

Buffy said something quiet in response and the microwave beeped.

The next clear thing he heard was Dawn stomping into the dinning room. “I SO did my homework. God, what crawled up your butt today?”

More bangs and slams – Dawn was a force through the house, every step clearly located, with Buffy following like an echo. So he was concentrating on Dawn leaving out the front door and didn’t notice Buffy’s tread on the stairs until the floorboard right outside the bedroom door creaked.

Startled by the noise, he didn’t have time to decide to feign sleep before the door was open and Buffy was looking right at him, peering over a coffee mug. “Hey,” she said.

He could smell the blood, hunger awakening brand-new and urgent. He scooted up to sit against the headboard as she approached.

“You’re probably still hungry,” she said, holding out the mug. Spike stared at it. “Don’t look at it like it’s going to bite you; take it.”

His hands shook as he took the mug. He grimaced, wishing he could stop being so pathetic. “Thanks,” he said.

She settled on the edge of the bed, facing away from him, her hands in her lap. “I feel so stupid. I really trusted him. Maybe just because he told me what I already felt – that I couldn’t handle this.”

Spike bit back a fear of her anger and moved closer to her; since he wanted to move further away that was surely the right thing to do. He carefully balanced the mug of blood against his chest and put his free hand on her shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She stared at him, a worried little wrinkle between her brows.

He scooted closer.

She jumped up. “Drink your blood.”

Of course. He was too thin for her to want to touch him. He shank in on himself and quickly drank the tepid blood. He felt guilty, both for his inability to make Angel care enough to feed him and for the betrayal of his body that just wasted away.

When he finished the mug and looked up, Buffy was staring at him again. He dropped his gaze.

“What is going on in your head?” Buffy asked, wistfully, more to herself than to him.

He risked answering, “Don’t want to be a burden.”

She flattened her palm against his cheek and raised his head to his gaze would meet hers. “You aren’t. And don’t think about that. That’s the sort of thinking that… just don’t. I’m taking responsibility for you and that’s final. Okay?”

He nodded, carefully avoiding her eyes. Her hand was warm and comforting on his cheek.

“Now,” she said, forcibly perky. “More liquid cow?” She picked up the mug and waggled it.

He bit his lip and felt his stomach.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Buffy said, and was soon gone from the room again.

Spike slumped back against the pillows, a little dizzy and exhausted from the dissipating tension and fear.

Sounds from below again, the clangs and footfalls. Then Buffy, on the phone, “No, don’t bother, Cordy. Just tell him I called to tell him he’s an arrogant, hypocritical jerk. No. Look, he told ME I couldn’t… yeah, I think that does make a hypocrite. Just… fine. Never mind.”

The soft chiming of a slammed phone. Stomping feet. The scent of blood. The door opened again. Buffy ducked her head. “So you heard all that?”

Spike licked his dry lips. “Can’t get enough of telling the old man off, can you?”

She handed him the re-filled mug before starting to pace. “I can’t stand it. Nothing I’ve said is quite exactly what I want him to hear. And I don’t know if he’ll ever hear it right, anyway.”

Her arms were tightly crossed on her chest, her hair stringy, her face flushed and shining with sweat and steam from the dishwasher. She’d paid no attention to her appearance that day. She was gorgeous. She shook her head, some silent, internal argument, and turned to face him. “Sorry. I’m not sure what this looks like to you. Maybe you think I’m just trying to be as outraged as possible, because that makes it less my fault.”

“I’m thinking nothing of the kind,” Spike tilted his head. “Thought you knew me better than that.”

She looked so uncertain then that he wanted to take her into his arms, but he faltered trying to get up and it was he who ended up embraced.

“Spike – don’t. You’ll fall.” Buffy smoothed away his reaching hands and shook her head, taking the empty mug from him again and pushing him back.

There must have been something funny in his expression because Buffy bit her lip, suppressing a giggle. She brushed hair from his forehead. “It’s not going to be forever, you know. You will get better.”

Spike closed his eyes and swallowed. Getting better meant… what?

“Hey.” She was stroking his face. “Come on, how about we get you cleaned up? You’re, like, dusty. I didn’t know people could get dusty.” She ruffled his hair, which did feel odd, gritty and powdery.

Spike looked helplessly at the edge of the bed. He hated the thought of her carrying him to the bath like some invalid. “Nah… I mean, it can wait.”

“It’s no trouble, and you’re not being a burden, okay?” Buffy disappeared again, running off to the bathroom, opening and closing cabinets, and then down the stairs, running back and forth.

She came back with a small bowl of soapy water, a towel, and a hair brush. She sat down beside him and pulled him up until he was leaning against her. He shook a little – muscle fatigue mostly, he couldn’t help it. She held him still a moment, squeezed his shoulder, and then pretended not to notice.

She brushed his hair with the damp brush, dipping it in the bowl and shaking off excess water between each stroke, dabbing it and his scalp with the towel. For a time there was no sound but the drip of water and the slide of the comb. “My mom did this for me when I broke my wrist.” She paused to rinse the brush and ran a hand over his scalp. “It was a cheering accident. Way before the vampire slaying. I couldn’t get my cast wet and I was flipping out over how to wash my hair when mom just sat me down and took care of it.”

More dripping, more gentle pulling. “There. That’s feeling much better. Ick. The water’s beige.” She set the brush down and ran a wash cloth over his face and neck, down into his shirt collar, following it with a pass with the towel.

“I miss her. Sometimes. All the time. But that’s life. That’s growing up. I’m trying to stop being sad about it and try to just be the person she would be proud of.”

Buffy shifted, putting the brush and wash rag into the bowl to carry them away. Spike’s cheek rested against her breast and he started crying, silently, uncontrollably.

Clatter. Buffy was back, holding him. “What did I do wrong? Sh. Spike… stop. Please, stop.”

He wanted nothing more than to obey and stop, he tried to tell her that, but it came out a bit garbled.

She rolled him onto his side and hugged him, stroking his damp hair and the side of his face.

“Sh… it’s okay. It’s okay, Spike. You’re not well, but you will be.”

Her hands clasped over his, holding him and giving him something to hold onto. "You will be. You'll see."


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm calling this one done. I kept poking at it, unsure what I was doing with it, but eh, sometimes you just gotta say it's done and move on to the next thing, right?
> 
> Anyway, here it is, the last, long-awaited chapter of Finders, Keepers. This was started, you might recall (if you have an excellent memory) as a mod challenge at Nekid Spike for Tamakin who wanted lots of Spike hurt and some comfort, too. Guess which of those requests I had trouble with... ;)

For a few days, it continued just like that. Spike slept, mostly. He was used to simply existing through long periods of neglect. Doing nothing was always the safest thing. Buffy or Dawn came to feed him.

Then Willow came, fidgeting and looking away from him the whole time. She smelled strange. The burnt incense of magic was gone, or more burnt than usual, and she had dried tears. He almost flinched as she sat beside him, and then she flinched in response.

“Are you still afraid of me?” he asked.

She finally turned to face him, eyes wide. “No. I mean… not in that way. The bitey way. Are you done?”

Spike handed back the empty mug and lowered his head. “Thanks.”

“It’s just that you look scared.”

Spike looked up at her.

She looked caught out. She looked at her white-knuckle hands, fidgeting with the tea tray she’d brought the blood on. “It’s unnerving. You look like you think I’m going to beat you. Or… or something.” She stood. “I’ll go, now. Um… you do know you can get up out of bed, right? Or, can you?”

Spike shook his head. “I haven’t tried. Do I look better?”

“You couldn’t look worse,” she said, with a helpless little shrug. She looked for a moment like she was going to say something more, but she just turned and left.

When the door clicked comfortingly closed, Spike released a held breath and stretched. He was scared – how pathetic was that? Even if this wasn’t real, if it was a dream… he could get out of bed. He could stand.

He only had to tell it to himself eight or nine times before he got the courage to pull back the covers.

He crossed the hallway like a trespasser, which is what he felt like, and quickly locked himself into the bathroom. It was a comforting space: enclosed, warm, with small hiding spaces under the sink or in the linen closet should things suddenly turn wrong. It smelled strongly of perfumes and products and soggy hair and shed skin and the myriad excretions of the human body. It was very much a place of living humanity.

Feeling safer, stronger, he took a shower.

He felt almost normal, stepping out of the steamy bathroom into the hallway, toweling his hair. He let the towel drop on the floor as he walked.

Then ran back and picked it up, worried how Buffy or Willow would react to it.

He paced a bit as he changed into fresh clothes, and practiced a few lines. “That being a complete nancy bit… I was just letting you feel good about yourself. Yeah. Because… I’m leading you into a false sense of security?” He frowned. “Christ, I don’t even remember how to behave like myself.”

He could feel people downstairs – their hearts, their muffled conversations and noise. The front door opened and a waft of pepperoni carried through the air.

Cautious again, Spike crept to the stairs.

“…anything for days, but he could…”

“Spike!” Dawn appeared at the base of the stairs, peering up hopefully at him.

Spike grasped his unbeating heart. “Developing vamp senses, are you, Niblet?”

She smirked. “I saw your shadow on the wall, dummy.”

Buffy, Xander and Willow sat around an open pizza box, slices in their hands, suddenly silenced.

Spike let Dawn drag him down the stairs. “’Salright,” he said, “you can keep talking about me.”

“We weren’t talking about you,” Xander said, too tiredly to sound truly hostile.

“Willow is going to visit Giles in England,” Buffy said, a little too brightly. “It’s like… witch camp.”

“Oh. That’s… nice.”

Willow smiled and nodded with exaggerated cheer.

Xander dropped his pizza slice with a wet slap. “Can we not pretend everything is normal?” He stood and pointed at Spike. “You weren’t here, and we coulda used you, trauma-boy. I’m sorry for whatever crap you went through – I don’t even want to know about it, but what I do know is that you killed lots of people, and we have to walk on eggshells around you and help you get better, while my best friend in the world gets shipped off to Hogwart’s rehab department or something for just killing one bastard who really, really deserved it.”

“Xander, I’m choosing to go,” Willow said, at the exact time that Dawn said, “That was so mean!”

Buffy jumped up to stand in front of Spike, as thought to shield him from Xander’s vocal attack.

He didn’t need that. He looked at Willow, who was studiously looking at nothing in particular. Now Spike recognized that hesitancy she wore – it was guilt, as thick and dark as any Angelus had. “I’m sure he deserved it, Red. Would have killed him for you, if I could.”

Buffy put her hand on his chest. “Not helping.”

“Tell me what to say,” he pleaded, and her eyebrows canted helplessly.

She turned her back to him again. “Spike is a part of this team, and he’s recovering, yeah, but he will recover, and we need him, especially with Willow leaving. So yes, Xander, we’re going to walk on eggshells if we have to.”

Spike bit his lip. “I don’t want to…”

Buffy spun around, one finger raised, “If you say ‘I don’t want to be a burden’ one more time, I will slap you.”

Spike smiled, a little shocked, and let Dawn guide him over to an open spot on the couch next to Willow.

“We’re all one big happy team,” Dawn said, squeezing his arm. She leaned closer. “Xander’s just jealous because you’re dating Buffy.”

Spike looked to Buffy in alarm, but she just shrugged. “Dated,” she said. “Nothing going on with PTSD-vamp. Let’s be mature.”

“You told them?”

Buffy picked up a piece of pizza and dropped onto the opposite couch. “Willow skinned a guy alive. I went crazy and tried to kill everyone. Xander left Anya at the altar. Dawn was a little klepto. That’s a recap of the past few months. We’re beyond caring who’s sleeping with who, here.”

Spike looked around the room, where everyone was trying to avoid each other’s gaze simultaneously, except for Buffy. Her gaze was straight forward, not hiding.

Spike smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

Buffy’s eyes narrowed a bit, as though she was about to warn him not to get emotional over it, and a laugh escaped from him, apparently on its own volition because he hadn’t expected it. He scooted forward in his seat and picked up a slice of the pizza. It was hot and dripping and smelled of garlic that would burn and sizzle on his palate. He laughed again and nudged Dawn.

“What?” Dawn asked.

“You know, I just realized I am going to get better,” he said, and leaned back, slurping the tender narrow end of his pizza slice into his mouth.

Shoulders lowered around the room, spines relaxing.

“Freak,” Dawn said, affectionately.

Xander started teasing about the quality of food Willow would endure in England and Spike quickly pointed out that they did, in fact, have pizza in Old Blighty.

Buffy wiped something away from the corner of her eye and picked up two empty glasses. "Spike, will you help me in the kitchen?"

Spike glanced to the others, to see if they noticed anything unusual, but they weren't looking his way, or even concerned. Buffy was waiting by the hallway for him. He followed her to the kitchen. While she set the glasses in the sink, he said, carefully, "I just want you to know - I'm not following you here, doing what you say, because I feel like I have to, or I'm afraid you'll punish me or anything like that."

She turned and looked at him, eyes wide, clearly worried.

"I mean it," Spike said, stepping closer. "Look... I know... it's not going to be overnight, I get that, and maybe some times I will slip up, forget, forget that I'm here and not there. But not tonight, and maybe not too often. The truth is, I'm thrilled you asked me for something; it means you don't see me as an invalid."

Buffy's lips rolled inward, the way they did when she was about to say something she didn't want to. "I just wanted to get you alone so I could ask if you wanted an excuse to bail before Giles gets here."

He stared at her a moment. She sighed and went to the refrigerator. "Sorry. God, that was..."

"Very kind of you," he cut her off. "Thanks."

She leaned back against the fridge and crossed her arms. "So do you? Want to bail?"

"Desperately. Which is why I probably shouldn't."

"You don't have to be strong for me, Spike. It's Giles. He's all... British. And the two of you will be all British at each other and I'm sure it won't help. There will be silent glares and stiffled emotions and, and eyeglass polishing."

Spike felt his lips lifting involuntarily, though he wanted to maintain a serious expression for this conversation. "Now I do want to stay."

She put her hands on his shoulders. "You don't have to deal with everything all at once. You taught me that, when I was back from the dead. Sometimes you have to give yourself time to heal."

"You saved me," Spike said.

"It's not about me saving you; now it's about saving yourself from what they did to you."

He shook his head. "They used you, Buffy. To break me. That's what really did it. They had you come and tell me you weren't rescuing me. That I wasn't important enough to you. Oh they did it a couple times, each time more convincing, but all I have to remember is, in the end, you proved them wrong. You pulled me out of the auction house and even then you didn't stop saving me. You kept at it. They told me things that I secretly believed about myself - that I was worthless. But your simple actions tell me I have worth. So don't you see? I'll get better. Just keep believing in me."

Buffy let go, a little nervously, like letting go of a child about to take his first tottering steps, but she did, and she nodded. "Great. So help me get these cokes."

And he did have to deal with a long lecture from Giles, and he did casually ask Willow if Tara was going to join her on her trip, but even that was survived and when he settled down to sleep that night, he knew it was real.

THE END


End file.
